sugar sweet: a collection of Jerza
by thir13enth
Summary: [11] Just about everything was greener on the other side of Erza's fence—well except for her neighbor. He was just hot. Jerza, a library of one-shots.
1. sugar sweet

**Short AU Jerza drabble. Written for a tumblr prompt!**

* * *

"There he is again," Cana scoffed, throwing her dish rag over her right shoulder.

"What is his problem?" Lucy relayed, in the same disdain, holding the dirty dishes over the sink.

"Oh my," Mirajane added, her broom frozen in her dual-handed grip.

Erza looked up in the same direction as her other fellow waitresses, seeing an all too familiar blue-haired man walk through the glass doors of Café Fairy Tail. He took a suspicious glance at the pastries on displays before raising his head up to look up at the overhanging coffee and drinks menu.

And, just like he had done every day that week, he dismissed everything the café had to offer and took a seat at one of the square tables exactly in the center of the café, splaying himself over a chair, placing his dirty backpack onto another chair, and kicking his feet up—right and left foot occupying their own chairs. Each.

Erza's eyebrows narrowed.

"Is it _that_ guy again?" Levy inquisitively asked, making her way toward the front of the shop to see what had caused the sudden silence behind the counter.

With upturned noses and slightly resentful eyes, the five women watched the man make himself comfortable, taking up the space of four people despite the fact that he hadn't even bought anything from the café for one.

The guy always did this. At precisely eight in the morning, during one of their peak periods at the café, the self-serving man would lumber into the café and sit down without so much as a considerate purchase of one of their town-famous croissants or critically-acclaimed cappuccinos. He would then proceed to take sugar packets (the highly-demanded _brown sugar_ ones, no less) from the table—slowly and one by one, as if he didn't think that the five pairs of eyes behind the café counter would ever notice his theft.

On Monday, Levy had been the first of them that had attempted to give the sugar-stealing man a talk. She was the gentlest and used the most reason in her everyday conversations, so the five of them had thought that sending Levy would result in the most polite and effective way to get rid of their ant problem.

However, on Tuesday, they had found themselves turning to Mirajane, who turned up the sternness a notch for the second day of the week. ("You'll regret it if you keep coming back," she told him, with bright eyes.) However, even Mira's ironic and frighteningly wide smile hadn't prevented the freeloader for coming back on hump day.

On Wednesday, Lucy had tried implementing anger into their demands, explicitly laying out the qualitative and quantitative data—from the number of grams of brown sugar he had stolen to count to the appeal of the other customers that were drinking their morning brew and needed a place to sit their touche—of how much trouble the man had been causing them.

Despite Lucy's best effort to present the wrongdoings of the glucose parasite, on Thursday, he had returned, and Cana had decided right then and there that she was going to handle things her way, swinging her dish towel behind her shoulder and confronting the man. She had stomped her high-heeled boot onto the seat space between the guy's spread legs (his feet, after all, were taking up _two_ different seats). She had leaned forward, letting the odor of her very old dish towel tickle his nose, growling that she had better not see him again.

Yet, even after a direct threat to his very masculinity, here he was again.

Today was Friday. And today was Erza's turn. And Erza was not happy.

She crossed her arms and stormed her way past the counter and to the persistent and stubborn patron. She would shame him in front of the rest of the customers without shame. She would force him to pack up his things in that second and to leave the café for the very last time. She would scare him enough to send him crying back to his mother's womb.

"Hey, you," she called out to him before she had even gotten within ten feet of him.

Everyone in the café turned their heads, surrendering their coffee and croissants to give their full attention to the sharp interjection by the scarlet-haired waitress.

Everyone, of course, except _him_.

He kept his eyes trained on the book he was fake-reading, completely passive and unreactive.

This wouldn't bode well him for him.

She swooped into his scene, grabbing the spine of his book and slapping the hardcover book back down onto the table, so hard that the salt and pepper shakers toppled over, crying white and black tears.

"You," she snarled.

"And to what do I owe the pleasure of meeting such a beautiful woman?" he said, before finally looking up to meet her eyes.

"All the sugar packets that you have stolen this past week," she pressed, almost spitting into the horrendous symbol tattooed over his face.

"Oh, was _this_ what this was all about?" he asked, feigning a calm ignorance that sent furious goosebumps up the back of her neck.

"Hand them over," she said, putting out her right hand.

He looked at her (was that _smugness_?) for a brief moment, before he looked at the front pocket of his backpack.

Erza glanced at the filthy excuse for a bag, deciding that she would take the sugar packets back only for show. There was no way in hell she was going to put the sugar packets back onto the sweetener rack to re-offer her loyal customers whatever had come out of this man's mess.

He scooped deep into the backpack, both hands coming out with a large tumbleweed of sugar packets. He certainly didn't just steal those all in _one day,_ did he? Some of the sugar packets in his bag must have dated back all the way from Monday!

The man dropped his two-handed load onto Erza's outstretched hand, giving her a mischievous smile. She watched as the sugar packets fell all over the table, only five packets actually landing in her open palm—a disheveled pile of the café-branded sugar, an assortment of crumbs from god knew what or when, and a couple of black lint balls of aged backpack fabric.

She shot him a dirty glare.

"Why are you taking our sugar?" she hissed.

"I was looking for something sweet," he replied, leaning back into his chair.

"You can get sugar anywhere else," she stiffly retorted.

"Right, but I can only get _you_ here," he said, giving her a wink.

And that was she threw the disheveled pile of the café-branded sugar, an assortment of crumbs from god knew what or when, and a couple of black lint balls of aged backpack fabric into his face.

* * *

 **Not sure if this is going to become a cookie jar of Jerza, but let me know what you think and if I should continue with more little shorts!**

 **...actually, okay, let's not kid myself. I'm probably going to write more Jerza. The ship has set sail. I shall continue.**

 **thir13enth**

 **(In other notes, I realize that all the café workers are female, which is pretty genderized for me to have done, but for some reason my writing self decided that this was the way I wanted it to be. I know, terrible. Maybe a self-internalized patriarchy. Alas.)**


	2. cake walk

**Hello again! My Jerza gerbil of inspiration is running full speed right now. And I have no idea what is fueling it. However, good for you, I've decided that this story** ** _sugar sweet_** **is going to be my collection of Jerza AU drabbles. Yay for everyone.**

 **Anyway, yesterday—especially in a special part of the United States—was Sweetest Day! Although I missed giving out sweets to anyone I know, I didn't think that my favorite OTP of Fairy Tail should be left out of the celebration. And hence:**

* * *

 **cake walk**

* * *

Erza fixed her shirt collar and smoothed out the wrinkles in her pencil skirt.

Today was going to be the day.

She could feel it in her bones. Today would be the day that she would be successful in telling her office mate Mr. Jellal Fernandes how she truly felt. Today would be the day that she would tell him that she had actually really enjoyed the date that he had taken her out on the week before and wanted to go get dinner with him again this week.

Ever since last Saturday, she had been struggling to find a way to tell the handsome man that she appreciated him taking her out for a nice dinner and that she wanted to have dinner with him again.

However, they had never exchanged numbers, so she had been wallowing in nervousness in her bed all Sunday waiting for Monday to come. She had replayed the scenes over and over in her head—thinking about what cute or sentimental or classy quotes she would be able to use to express her sentiments toward him and toward their date.

But then, according to the social media trends, she had noticed that Monday just happened to also be Sweetest Day—apparently a day that celebrated all kinds of love and appreciation, encouraging people to give all their loved ones, from friends to grandparents to lovers, something sweet to eat.

Of course, as the sweet tooth, Erza had immediately fallen in love with the idea.

What else could express her love and appreciation more than strawberry shortcake? To her, strawberry shortcakes were of the upmost level of gratitude and affection—there was nothing more serious to her than presenting a fact with a strawberry shortcake.

So she had gone to the bakery shop first thing that morning and bought Jellal the biggest, freshest, most beautiful, and most tasty-looking strawberry shortcake she could find.

And now, here she was, standing with a huge bakery box—that had a clear plastic lining to show the gorgeous confection within—in the middle of the office, where she had previously planned to "accidentally" bump into him.

"H-Happy Sweetest Day, Jellal!" she cheered in a stutter, practically shoving the dessert into his hands.

He looked at the strawberry shortcake in front of him for a moment.

And in that moment, a million thoughts raced through her head.

Why was he taking such a long time to respond? Maybe he was rejecting her love and he was thinking about the nicest and most appropriate way to say it to her face? Maybe he didn't have the heart to tell her the truth—that he didn't actually feel the same way about her as she did about him and that the whole "date" was really just a friendly dinner between office mates? Maybe he was going through a mental list in his head of all his single friends that he knew that he could recommend her to try?

Maybe…maybe he didn't like cake?!

But that was impossible, right? No one didn't _not_ like cake, right?

Her mind froze when she saw him look back up at her, with an arched eyebrow.

"…what do you want, Erza?"

She died a little bit on the inside.

"Huh?" was the only question she could get out.

"Well…" he started, pointing at the shortcake. "The Erza that I know would never just pass up a cake and give it to someone else just because she felt like it. Any cake that she gets is one that she eats." He crossed his arms and propped his chin on his hand. "So…honestly, the only thing that I can think is that you want something from me."

If she wasn't holding a cake and doing her best to not drop it, she would have just crawled up into a ball into the corner of the office. Did she really have that bad of a reputation regarding cake?

She thought quickly back through the year. Indeed, the last time that Natsu had a birthday celebration in the office, she claimed all the slices for herself and didn't even let Natsu have one, and indeed, when they were about to throw a surprise birthday party in the office for Gray, they had to make up an excuse about why they didn't have a cake because she had eaten it earlier in the day.

But surely _that_ didn't mean that she wanted favors from people when she gave them cakes, did it?

"I just wanted to give you cake!" she said, as brightly as she could, pushing forward the strawberry shortcake into his face again.

His eyes shifted around the office a little bit—as if he was embarrassed by the fact that she was doing this. He hesitated.

She felt her face melting like butter in the hot midday sun on top of a car's radiator in the middle of a desert.

This was truly all a misunderstanding, wasn't it? He hadn't taken her out for dinner because he was interested in her! The dinner—despite the expensive wine, five-course meal, and stargazing afterwards—was truly just a platonic bonding experience with a fellow office co-worker, wasn't it?

She held her breath and prepared for the worst, arms starting to grow tired under the heavy weight of the many layers of whipped cream, strawberries, and shortcake.

"Thanks, Erza," he said, without any sign of amusement in his voice.

And as she saw her worst fears coming to life, she gritted her teeth and endured holding out the cake that she had oh-so-painstakingly-chosen-for-him between them. The large cake slowly became a symbol of the growing distance between the two office co-workers.

She would never cross this line again.

"Why don't we leave the cake in the kitchen so that maybe other people can have it too?" he suggested.

This, to her, sounded like he was banishing her to hell. This was truly all a mistake.

Swallowing her heart, Erza nodded, quietly following after Mr. Fernandes to the office kitchen. He opened the door for her, and she walked in, gently settling the heavy cake (and her heavy heart) onto the round table in the kitchen.

Mr. Fernandes let the door close behind him, walking over to the sink—

Actually, he stopped right in front of her.

She couldn't help her eyes from widening and her stomach from making an excited flip at seeing how he was practically at arms length away from her.

But now, there was no cake between them.

He gave her a soft smile—one that broke his hard words from before and cracked the rather serious expression he had on his face.

"Hey," he said.

What.

"H-Hey," she could only reply.

Jellal laughed, a sound that reminded Erza of angels—given angels were depicted as male creatures with exceptionally smooth and velvety dark chocolate baritone voices.

He placed his right hand against the side of her face, cherishing the look of her obvious confusion by his contradictory actions.

"We have to be careful, Erza," he said, his fingers playing with her scarlet hair. "It'd be bad if people found out we were dating—especially if our bosses found out that we were hanging out beyond working hours."

Oh.

She nervously laughed. "Of course," she sputtered. "I…I guess, I thought, well—me giving you cake was just a nice gesture!"

His smile widened. "Do you have time tonight?"

Her heart skipped. "Yes!" she chirped, a little more excitedly than she would like.

"Perfect," Jellal said, before taking back his hand and turning around to leave the office kitchen. "I'll see you after work then? Maybe save the cake for later?"

She nodded, watching his handsome figure reach for the kitchen door.

Cake and dinner with Jellal sounded like the best thing that could happen to her this Sweetest Day, regardless of how invented and made up the holiday might have been.

"Besides," he added, looking back at her with a mischievous smile. "I don't want to miss the opportunity to feed you some cake myself."

* * *

 **Tried a slightly different writing style. Teehee, let me know what you think!**

 **thir13enth**

 **(In other notes, I'm also liking that my original title is a nice theme for the two drabbles so far. I can't guarantee that I'm going to always be writing about something related to sweets—although given Erza, I don't think that would be too difficult to do in the first place…)**


	3. trapped and tangled

**Another Jerza drabble! Also written for yet another tumblr prompt.**

* * *

 **trapped and tangled**

* * *

It was really _his_ fault that they had ended up in this mess.

She had been the one that had originally thought taking a nap in the hammock would be a good idea, so she had climbed into the net and made herself at home, lying between the trees and watching the summer sun set. It had been a long day at school, and Erza had kicked off her shoes and plopped herself in, settling into ultra-relaxation.

And of course, anything that she did, he just _had_ to do as well. So despite her protest and her warning that the hammock was probably not meant for two people, he stepped into the hammock—and for a single second, she actually thought it would work—but lost balance and fell on top of her.

The momentum of his fall spun the entire hammock around two or three times, and the two high school students found themselves trapped and tangled in the clutches of a twine hammock…and of each other.

She took another deep breath, before opening her eyes and reminding herself of the awkward position the two of them were now stuck in.

Erza looked down at her stomach, where Jellal's face lay smushed up against her white blouse.

"Don't drool on my uniform," she told him. "I just washed this shirt yesterday."

"I'm not drooling," he retorted, muffled into the cotton of her button-down and irritated. Nevertheless, she heard him suck his lips just to make certain there truly was no saliva falling out of his mouth.

She sighed again, shifting uncomfortably away from the twine that was cutting into her skin. She wiggled her midsection a little bit, completely aware that there was the high probability that her light pink underwear was showing for the whole world to see. Her dark green uniform skirt felt like it had ridden up her thigh and probably was folded between the twine net and her butt.

"Hey, stop moving," Jellal complained, shifting his own weight in response to her. "Ow, fuck!"

"Let me just—" and she exhaled sharply before forcing her right foot up and around his thigh. She took a deep breath of relief, feeling the blood rush back into her previously trapped foot.

Jellal seemed to want to take the opportunity to make himself more comfortable too, and she felt his hands grope around just underneath her armpits.

"What are you doing?!" she exclaimed, moving away from his scrambling limbs.

He grabbed hold of some of the netting with his fingers and attempted to push himself up, lifting his face from her stomach. However, he lost his balance—and both of them completely flipped over.

"You just made it worse!" Erza snapped, blushing madly when she realized when she saw tufts of his blue hair under her—which meant that his face was pretty much smashed up against her boobs. "You just made it _waaaaay_ worse!"

"Sorry!" he mumbled into her body. He flailed his arms up and around her body, hugging her waist.

"W-w-what are you doing?!" she asked, in bewilderment, feeling the entire hammock shuffle under her.

"Can't…breathe," he explained, pulling her body down enough so that his face was free to breathe. Even the hot sticky summer air felt so much cooler than the last few minutes he was pressed up against Erza's very warm skin. He kept his arms wrapped around her waist.

She looked at him, watching him catch his breath while feeling the up and down of his breathing underneath her body. She couldn't help but smile, seeing his exhausted face and the small beads of sweat that formed on his forehead.

"Look what you've done, you stupid idiot," she scolded him, softly. "Now we're stuck in a hammock and the sun is setting and no one is going to help us."

His eyes turned to meet hers and he gave her a light smile. "Well I'd rather be stuck in a hammock with you than with anyone else in the world."

"How romantic," she deadpanned, rolling her eyes.

He pulled his head up as much as he could and kissed her. He couldn't reach her lips, but surely just because the kiss landed on her jaw didn't mean that he didn't mean it just as much.

"Hey," she said, cringing back from him and frowning. "What if people see?"

"What if people see us stuck in a hammock?" He raised his eyebrow, joking.

"No…" she replied, although she couldn't help but laugh. "What if people see us…together?"

It wasn't that she was uncomfortable about the idea of being with Jellal or the idea of people knowing that she was with Jellal or even about any public displays of affection—but what was it? She still couldn't figure it out.

Jellal looked at her. It wasn't the first time that she had expressed discomfort—whether implicitly or not—that something about their relationship bothered her.

"Erza, we've been together for two years now—I think people know that we're a thing."

"I...I know," she started.

"You…you don't want me to kiss you in public?"

"No, no," she corrected him. "I want you to kiss me—" and then she stuttered, "—I mean, it's fine, if you kiss me…in public." She blushed furiously.

"Good," he said, planting another kiss on her—and this time, he didn't miss. "But what's wrong?"

She took a deep breath in and out, not sure what she wanted to say. "I just don't want to be seen with you…all the time."

"You…want me to keep my distance?" he said, hesitant.

"No, I want to be with you as much as I can but...I just don't want to be seen as _only_ with you." She thought for a second and then added. "I don't want to be just 'Jellal's girlfriend,' and I don't want you to just be 'Erza's boyfriend.' You know?"

After a beat, Jellal smiled, bringing her in for an even deeper hug.

"Erza, I'm not going to be mad if you want to do things for yourself—just because you're my girlfriend doesn't mean that you have to bring me into everything that you do. And you're not just my shadow. You're a strong, independent person that just chose to be in a relationship because you want to be in a relationship—not because you're depending on me or because you need me." He paused for a moment.

"And if anyone thinks otherwise, I'll make sure they know that you're not just an attachment to me," he continued. "I'll make sure they know your name, and I'll make sure they'll remember that you're more than _just_ my girlfriend."

Erza wasn't sure if that was what she had wanted to hear from him, but nevertheless, it felt like the assurance she needed from him, and she was very happy that she had been able to get this off her chest. It was also then that Erza had a sudden thought.

Maybe, just maybe, the two of them would count much more than just two years together.

"But there's a bigger problem," he said, seriously.

She blinked, worried about the conversation to come. "W-what?"

He stared deeply into her eyes for a long minute.

"If we don't get out of here before 7 p.m., I'm not going to make it home in time for dinner," he confessed.

A rush of relief passed over her. Before she became mad.

"Jellal! Don't scare me like that again!" She raised her hand, about to hit him—even though they both knew that she probably couldn't maneuver that while tangled up with each other in the hammock.

He laughed. "This is serious!" he retorted. "What am I going to do?"

She opened her mouth, but her words took a while to come out.

"Just…just have dinner with my family," she said, quietly.

"Really?" he asked. "You're going to let me meet your family? I guess something good came out of the hammock after all."

"Shut up."

* * *

 **In case anyone was particular about details, yes this story takes places in the summer time, but…yeah school is still in session. And yeah…I guess the conversation was a little deep for a couple high schoolers…**

 **thir13enth**


	4. price tag

**Just some more sugary sweet Jerza to fit the Halloween mood!**

 **Some other couples included in this piece. ;)**

* * *

 **price tag**

* * *

Erza's bakery had many regular customers.

It wasn't hard to understand either. Her dedication to the sweet industry was very clear in her independently owned shop. Erza spent all day thinking about flour, sugar, eggs, heavy cream, and all the inventive things she could make from them.

She woke up at the crack of dawn to mix batters and brew her bittersweet coffee, worked through the late morning to decoratively frost the gorgeous special event cakes sitting in the back, spent lunch catering for businesses or get-togethers, took the afternoon rolling cookie dough and pie crusts, and occupied her nights thinking of new recipes and designs for the next morning, while taking care of her social media platforms.

And all in the meantime, the superwoman also countered her bakery, taking orders and interacting with every single customer that came in through the door.

When she was done with her work, everyone that walked in through the door walked out with one of her sweets—and then would later come back with a friend, their family, or at the very least, just themselves to indulge in her addictive desserts.

And Erza was always baking up something new—her bakery's displays not only changed with the seasons, but also offered rare limited edition types of sweets, ones where she only had made one or two batches for.

"Laxus!" she exclaimed, seeing the blond come in through the door. She quickly checked her phone calendar—indeed it was about to be _that_ day. "It's your sister's birthday tomorrow, isn't it?"

He gave her a big smile. "You always remember, Erza. Same kind of cake as always, right?"

"A completely ice cream cake—rainbow sherbet with white vanilla icing," the scarlet-haired baker recited. "And Mavis is turning…how old again? Fourteen?"

"Spot on," the older brother confirmed, putting down his credit card on the counter. "She's actually getting older way too quickly. Apparently now she has a boyfriend in high school, some punk named Zeref."

"Oh, Laxus, don't make fun of high school love," Erza chided. "I mean, look at what happened to you and Mira!"

The man however didn't want to face his hypocrisy, and his attention strayed to the display underneath the counter. He pondered, looking at the fruit custard pies for a good moment.

Erza peered over the counter to see what he was looking at. She smiled, knowing what might have been going through his mind.

"I think Mira might like that one," Erza pointed, from the other side of the glass. "What do you think?"

Laxus gave her a toothy smile. "You think so? Is that going to keep until our date tonight?"

She nodded. "I'll make sure of it."

He rose up back to his full height. "I'll take that one then."

Five minutes later, Laxus walked out of her bakery shop, a happier man than he had walked in as, the free medium-sized black coffee Erza had given him in his right hand and a classy paper bag holding a sweet for his sweetheart for later that day in his left hand.

Then a few minutes afterward, a very familiar pink-haired man walked in.

"Oh! Natsu!" Erza exclaimed, excited.

She hurriedly stepped past the counter to grab Natsu's wrist, leading him behind the bakery counter to her frosting station in the back. "Tada!" she cheered, lifting the white cloth off the tall glass container, showing off a beautiful, many tiered, baby blue rose-adorned white wedding cake.

"Erza!" Natsu said, his pitch high. He pressed his hands and face to the glass counter, taking as close of a glance of the cake as he possibly could. "This is great, Erza! Thanks so much! She'll love this so much."

He turned to the baker, face beaming even more brightly than she had ever seen him.

"Thank you so much, Erza—I knew I could trust you," Natsu thanked her again, looking back at the cake.

Erza's smile widened. "The wedding's this weekend, isn't it?"

"Oh, don't remind me," the fiancé reprimanded her. "Lucy is already going nuts trying to finalize her wedding dress and figure out what the bridesmaids are going to wear. It's a mess. The wedding planning is taking all my time this week—I had to take the week off from work!"

He stood, admiring Erza's handiwork with crossed arms. Erza couldn't help but also do the same. She was quite proud to admit that she had definitely spent all the time and effort as she could into Natsu and Lucy's cake.

And the cake had come out perfectly, of course.

Erza watched Natsu stare back at the top—to the two figurines perched on the very top layer. And she could see his dreams dancing in front of his eyes, coming to life within the next several days.

"So…" Erza said, although she regretted breaking Natsu from his daydreams. "I'll get this delivered bright and early Saturday morning?"

Natsu gave her a thumbs up, not tearing his eyes from the groom that symbolized who he would be. The bakery shop owner smiled to herself, deciding that she would let Natsu stay as long as he wanted, looking at his wedding cake.

She, however, had a business to run. And unfortunately she had a customer behind the counter when she returned.

"Hi! Sorry," she exclaimed, running back to the counter. "I was just helping another customer out with his wedding—"

And she froze mid-sentence when she saw who her current customer was.

"Je-Jellal," she said.

"Hey," he replied.

He was the exception.

Everyone that walked into her bakery store always walked out with one of her sweets in their hands, and that was because no one she knew was able to resist the temptation of her delicious tasting and scrumptious looking treats or Erza's advertising of the desserts.

Jellal, however, had gotten by the entire last month, walking into her bakery shop every single day, looking at the desserts on display, making conversation with her and eating samples— _without_ ever having walked out with a purchase from her shop.

Erza had been trying every day for the past month to convince him to buy one of her sweets—allowing him to taste an entire slice of cake for free or letting him watch her decorate one of her mini-cakes—but to no avail. She didn't know what it was with the guy, but it was clear that he admired the desserts, and it was clear that he had a sweet tooth.

He was a tricky customer, that one.

"So…what are you looking to get today?" she asked him, not letting herself become discouraged despite her bad track record with him.

"Oh, I'm just looking," he told her, flashing her a radiant smile.

Her heart fluttered a little bit.

It didn't really help that she found him extremely attractive, and sometimes in the middle of showing him all the wondrous desserts she could sell him, she would find herself staring at him instead of the sweets she was telling him about.

And maybe that was one of the reasons why she still hadn't been able yet to convince him to take a treat home for himself.

She watched him look down at the center cake on her display.

"This one is new," he commented.

She nodded, coming around to the front of the counter to squat next to him and join him in looking at her display.

"Yeah, it's one of my latest creations—a vegan purple taro cake," Erza explained. "I incorporated taro into the batter and substituted all the dairy products with natural coconut oils and milks. And then frosting on top is made from more taro and coconut, and I've sprinkled shredded coconut over the top as decoration and to add some texture."

She snuck a glance at him, taking a good look at his firm jawline and chiseled features, topped with his messy blue hair.

Bringing herself back to her business, she pointed at the cake again. "I've sold two slices already, and the customers told me that they could barely taste the taro, and that the taro actually just adds an extra rich creaminess that pairs well with the coconut—so definitely something you can eat, even if you hate vegetables."

"I really like the layers in the cake," Jellal noted. "I like the progression from completely vanilla to a really dark purple."

She smiled. "I switched up the ratio of taro in each layer and then also experimented with what parts of the roots I included in the batter."

"That's fascinating," he said. He turned his head to look at her, his chocolate eyes meeting hers. "You're so dedicated and enthusiastic," he added, for compliment.

Erza felt a sudden heat rise to her cheeks. But she wasn't going to let his words take her away from her entire objective. "Th-Thank you." She quickly stood up, shaking the blood back into her legs. "So are you going to buy something?"

He looked back at the taro cake for a good minute before standing up to his tall and slim self. "I think I'm good," he concluded, giving her a smile. "Maybe another time?"

But before he could turn around to step toward the door, Erza used her last resort card.

"You come to the bakery every morning," she blurted, desperately.

When she ensured that she had caught his attention, she continued.

"And you always look at the cakes…but then you just walk back out without buying anything but I know you want something—seriously, just buy something already!"

The man looked genuinely confused.

"But…" he asked. "You're not up for purchase, are you?"

Her voice caught in her throat, and the heat that she had so painstakingly tucked away from her cheeks earlier suddenly back, full force.

"N-No?" she replied.

He gave her a warm smile and then took his leave. "I'll see you tomorrow then?"

She wasn't able to squeak an 'okay' before he had completely walked through the door, instead weakly waving a goodbye with her shaky right hand.

She stood there, in disbelief, for a good few minutes, before Natsu broke the spell.

"Eh? What happened, Erza?" Natsu asked her, coming up from behind her. He took a look at her face and pointed at it. "You're all red."

She shook her head, forcing a laugh and pretending nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

"Just a tricky customer," she simply said.

* * *

 **Not gonna lie, I'm definitely staying in tonight. Reviews shall keep me company. ;)**

 **Actually I'm not in the States right now so it's not like I can celebrate it anyway. Also I'm sorta upset that I'm missing out on Daylight Savings Time. I really did want to savor the extra gained hour of sleep.**

 **thir13enth**


	5. good game

**Hello and happy Sunday, my friends!**

 **This one's for my non-sportsy peeps and sportsy peeps alike! Hoping I do it some justice—I admit that I hail from the non-sportsy side, but now find myself in a relationship with a very sportsy one. I know, what fun.**

* * *

 **good game**

* * *

"What," the bubblegum-chewing scarlet-haired girl demanded, readjusting her overly-loose gray sweater over her white tank-topped body. She threw up her right leg over the arm of the sofa, sitting ill-manneredly in the comfy chair.

She blew a bubble, waiting for the navy blue-haired nerd in front of her to say something, _do_ something aside from sit in the wooden chair across from her and twiddle his thumbs.

This was the stupidest thing that Fairy Tail University (FTU) could ever do.

In order to strengthen the bonds within the newly incoming freshman class, the FTU president, in conjunction with its board of trustee members and student government, had decided that starting this year, the university would sponsor a class-wide initiative called "In Their Shoes" (ITS—of course, the logo featured athlete shoes—the university's attempt at being punny and cute).

Which, honest to god, was the most idiotic thing Erza Scarlet could waste her time over.

The purpose of ITS was to pair off student-athletes with other members of their class, hoping to facilitate and encourage friendships between student-athletes and non-student-athletes and to help bridge the divide between the sports-inclined and the not-so-sports-included.

And now, Erza Scarlet—star center-forward of FTU's highly-acclaimed women's soccer team—found herself wasting precious practice time attempting to make conversation with this Jellal Fernandes person—a good-for-nothing potential astronomy major (he hadn't even declared yet) and aspiring aerospace engineer (haha, wait until he took physics-not-for-dummies 101).

Her bubble popped. The runt still hadn't said a word, continuing to alternate between observing her and the carpet.

She couldn't blame him—she was pretty much doing the same thing. Although at this rate, she was finding the dust specks and the lint balls on the carpet much more interesting than the living person in front of her.

"So, what do you play again?" the guy suddenly peeped.

"Soccer," she answered immediately.

"Oh," he replied, and he gave her a small laugh. "Have you been playing soccer for long?"

"Since I came out of my mother's womb," she replied, without hesitation.

"Is that what you want to do when you graduate?"

"I'll try my best to keep it that way," she said.

She mentally sighed. His questions were even more boring than the interview questions she got from the student newspaper sports reporters after her games. And of course, they always picked her out—or the goalie—because she was the prime offense of the team.

A short silence elapsed between the two freshmen.

"I don't know too much about sports," the non-athlete sheepishly admitted.

"I mean, that's the whole point of this ITS exchange thing, I guess," Erza retorted.

Her foot got tired of where it was resting, and she readjusted her body, placing both her feet onto the ground. She leaned into the conversation, hoping that maybe the couple of hours requirement would pass by sooner as long as she was able to keep herself awake.

"So," she said, crossing one leg over the other and propping her chin up with her hand. "You want to be an astronaut or something, right?"

"Aerospace engineer," he corrected her.

"What's the difference? Sounds all like rocket science to me."

He hesitantly smiled. "Actually, that's a common misconception. Rocket science isn't actually a field of science. It's sorta just an expression."

Erza wasn't amused. "Well, if you're an aerospace engineer, you're going to be dealing with science right?"

"I guess…"

"And you're going to be dealing with like…rockets, right?"

"Yeah…I could…"

"Then, you're doing rocket science, right?" she concluded, motioning with her hands. "Science about rockets. Rocket science."

"I guess you make a good point there," he said, with a nervous smile.

Geez, the kid didn't even put up a fight.

She found herself leaning back into the sofa—unable to keep her attention on the conversation between them. She glanced at the clock, turning her head fully and without shame, and was discouraged to see that only five minutes had passed since she had sat down to start the ITS requirement.

"So what are you planning to major in?" he asked her.

And as common the question was, the fact that he asked it so straightforwardly—as if he was talking to a normal student that didn't balance athletics in their schedule—surprised her. She had just been judging him for being a just a _potential_ astronomy major, but he had already laid his major out with his career path and was probably already taking classes to fulfill his credits.

On the other hand, she had been so busy with practice—since student-athlete conditioning began even before the academic semester started—that she hadn't had the time to think about what she was going to do with the rest of her four years in college aside from play soccer.

In fact, the classes that she ended up taking this semester were purely general education requirements—as her athletic-academic mentor had suggested that she do.

"Well…I don't know yet," she said, hiding her uncertainty in a blanket statement. It was a defensive skill she learned to do in sports.

"That's okay," he assured her. "A lot of people in our class don't know what they're here to do."

She sucked her teeth. She wasn't looking for encouraging words or anything, thanks.

"So what classes are you taking for now, then?"

Honestly, the last thing she wanted to talk about was academics.

"The intro to computer science class, urban studies, and some humanities class," she rattled off. "For the university requirements mostly."

He nodded, and she suddenly noticed that the kid had a weird ass tattoo over his left eye.

The hell was that? Was he part of some secret order or something?

"Must be hard to balance your schedule," he continued.

She shrugged. Obviously, as a superhuman, she was able to accomplish anything she set her mind to, without fail—well, no shit Sherlock, _of course_ , she had to manage her time!

"You know, I don't know anything about you, but I really respect you," the aspiring engineer suddenly blurted.

She rose an eyebrow. "What, are you a fan of women's soccer or something?"

"No, no," he laughed, shaking his hand in front of him. "I don't know anything about sports—I just think that student-athletes work really hard, and I don't think that a lot of people realize that. They sorta just shit on you for being student celebrities that gets all the benefits and privileges from the university."

Well, this wasn't the first time she heard about shit that student-athletes got.

Although this _was_ the first time that she had met someone that claimed to not know anything about sports yet was talking even remotely positively about student athletes.

"What makes you say that?" she asked him, not breaking her collected façade.

"I…I don't know," he admitted. "I mean, I think you work just as hard as anyone else in the university. You're not spending hours at the lab doing research or at the theater memorizing your script, and you're not even like me, spending hours with the stargazing club, but nevertheless you're spending hours doing something that you're really passionate about."

Stargazing club?

"And I feel like you've dedicated even more time to what you do than many other people can say they have," he continued. He gestured toward her. "I mean, you've been playing soccer since you were a little kid right? And you've been training each and every day to keep yourself in top shape because even if you missed the benchmark running time by a second, you wouldn't have made the cut to this university."

He was in a stargazing club?

"And this university is different from other universities," he continued. "Some universities definitely just pick the student-athletes with the top times and highest stats and don't care about their students' education and let them slide by with below average grades, but Fairy Tail University is different—the student-athletes are just as valued as students as they are athletes."

She blinked, taking in everything he had touched upon in his rant.

"So yeah," he concluded. "I think you're pretty awesome." He sat back into his chair and crossed his arms, looking directly into her eyes.

After a long moment of silence, Erza found that she couldn't suppress the smile that crept up on her lips.

"Thanks for that," she said, repositioning her body. She sat upside down in the sofa now, placing her back onto the seat of the sofa and throwing her legs up the back. "I think I'm pretty awesome, too."

Jellal—was that the kid's name?—suddenly grew flustered.

"Well, I mean, no, I don't think—I mean, I think you're awesome, but not like…in any _way_ …or something."

She laughed, a really genuine laugh. One that made her hands curl up at her chest and left her writhing on the sofa, out of breath. When she finally fell out of her laughing fit, she looked at him, from her upside-down view, and saw his very confused and very confused face.

"Um…you okay?" he asked her, his hands out in front of him, sitting on the edge of his seat—as he was going to prevent her from falling out of the sofa.

She chuckled, swinging her legs around and sitting back up as properly as the star center-forward could.

"Sorry, I don't know why. I just found that funny," she said.

Even she could feel that her demeanor had completely changed. But she didn't mind if she was a little bit out of character in front of this boy—at least not anymore. And for some reason, she felt like she could let her student-athlete guard down, just like she would in front of any of her teammates in the locker room.

She snapped her bubble gum to make sure that she hadn't just fallen asleep in the middle of the ITS session and was dreaming.

"Thanks for that," she joked. "You're not an athlete, but after that valedictorian speech, maybe I can trust you after all."

He smiled, albeit nervously. He was clearly still pretty intimidated by her, and for a split second she felt bad that she had come into their session with her full bitter, sarcastic, and offensive force.

"So," she said, suddenly feeling awkward, as she realized that she had been the only one talking for the past several lines. She asked the first thing that came to her mind. "What's up with that tattoo on your face?"

"My tattoo?" he asked her, and she nodded.

The resulting heavy and serious silence wiped any remnants of smiles off her face.

Maybe that was something she shouldn't have asked?

He took a deep breath and started slowly. "A lot of people ask me about it. It's not like I had a choice in it or anything…it's just something that runs in the family…and the eldest son has to carry the mark of the clan."

Yeah, she shouldn't have asked.

An apology began to form on her lips, but then a smile flashed over his face.

"I kid," he laughed. "I was a dumb high schooler and actually did a dare. I was fucking stupid."

She took a moment to recover—as she would if she (somehow) had missed kicking the soccer ball that was straight in front of her—before she laughed again, clutching her stomach.

He watched her laugh her heart out with a crooked smile.

"You're funny," she said, wiping tears out of her eyes.

"I think you're giving me too much credit," he admitted.

"Shut up. I just laugh really hard when I laugh," she defended. "It's always been all or nothing when it comes to laughing for me."

He smiled. "Not gonna lie, that's kinda cute."

Erza looked up at him, suddenly feeling her face heating up. She managed a tight smile, biting her lip hard to keep herself from laughing out loud again.

Jellal suddenly grew flustered again. "I mean—I didn't mean it in _that_ kind of way or something—"

She burst out laughing again, and to keep her sides from peeling apart, she clutched her sides, curling up into a laughing ball on the sofa.

The next few hours—Erza realized then—wouldn't take too long to pass by after all.

And if Erza was allowed to Tweet anything else aside from her official athlete thoughts, she might even have Tweeted that she had just come out of a "good match."

* * *

 **I know, my puns are stupendous and you obviously love them.**

 **And no, this isn't how my significant other and I met. Our touchdown involved much more than just one play.**

 **Okay, I agree. I'll stop with the puns. In return, let me know what you think!**

 **thir13enth**


	6. collide

**Another sportsy and nerdy encounter. Written for the Jerza Love Fest Week 2015 prompt: collision.**

 **And as the prompt would suggest, this one-shot is a trainwreck from start to finish. I don't even know what I was writing half the time. (I admit that I couldn't help but use a Howie Day reference. But I swear it's only in the subtitle.)**

* * *

 **collide**

 _even the best fall down sometimes_

* * *

Erza was late for a _very important_ date.

As captain of the high school women's club volley ball team, she was responsible for the financial well-being of her team and therefore had _absolutely_ make to an important meeting with another club president, a meeting that was about to take place in a room all the way on the other side of the school—the physics teacher's classroom—in under five minutes.

No pressure at all.

But Erza, an athlete that came kicking out of her mother's womb, knew how to handle pressure and she was not daunted at all. She could make it—she just had to haul ass.

The scarlet-haired third-year sped-walked to her locker, swirling the combination on her padlock with one hand in three swift turns before pulling down and opening the metal container—the contents within half-slipping out.

Erza was never known for her organization and cleanliness, but at least she knew where everything was, and her nimble fingers picked through the stacks of textbooks, notebooks, erotic novels, highlighters, and loose sheets of papers to eventually grab onto her biology textbook and her laboratory book, as well as a couple of pens and pencils.

This very important lunch meeting with the other club president was taking place right before her fourth period biology class, and if she was going all the way to the science wing anyway, she might as well have gotten her stuff from her locker on the way there.

Remembering that she had a couple of paper assignments to turn in later that day, she pulled those sheets from her locker and then stuck them into her biology textbook—which was already serving as a folder for many of her notes and worksheets from a variety of classes.

Not bothering to even waste time to place these school supplies into her backpack, she slammed her locker shut in one swift movement, clicking the lock, and hurried on her way down the hall to make her way to the science wing of the school.

She huffed while storming down the crowds of other high school students, feeling some of the younger students stare at her while she made her way past them.

Erza knew she looked absolutely ridiculous—her shirt was wrinkled because she had forgotten to iron it last night, her hair was a mess because the weather decided to be humid that day, and yes, she was briskly half-walking half-sprinting with a not-so-neat pile of books and papers in her hands—and she mentally cursed Mirajane for having held her up during lunch.

Mirajane had just _had_ to gossip to her about the latest news going on in the high school social life circle, and Erza had just _had_ to listen to the girl talk on and on, because Erza needed to know all the information about the school politics as she could get—especially because her club volleyball team was low on funding and she needed to find good ways to make some quick money to get them to the Grand Volleyball Tournament happening in two months.

Which honestly was the whole reason why Erza had to book it to this very important meeting anyway.

She just needed the damn money.

Screw the high school bureaucracy and all the administrators that came along with it.

The fact that Erza was making a fool of herself in front of all these younger students was their fault from the start—the high school had rejected her club's request for transportation funding to the Grand Volleyball Tournament, deeming their need to rent a bus and a driver wasn't "necessary" if the girls would just "ask their parents for rides."

But ugh, carpooling with their parents? That would be _so_ annoying and _so_ uncool.

Adults just didn't get it. And weren't they supposed to encouraging building student independence so that they could get ready for college and beyond, anyway?

True to their ideals, the women's club volleyball team then decided to do things their own way—rent a private bus and driver.

But they had to make money somehow—and after some teachers caught a couple members of the volleyball club—Lucy and Cana, namely—selling homemade pastries under the table, they had reported them to the student organizations administrator, who clucked his table at their covet behavior to get funding for the tournament that they had failed to get money for in the first place.

The student organizations admin—seeing Erza's zealous will during his talk with her—suggested that they pair up with another club to make a joint fundraising event so that they would be able to get funding "legally."

Whatever that meant. Erza had played along with the bureaucratic game, and then selected the first club that was on the alphabetically-ordered list—

Astronomy club.

So yes—she, a disheveled-looking third-year student, was racing down the school hallway to the science wing because she needed to go to a meet with the president of the astronomy club and was carrying a bunch of books and papers and looking like a total loser that was trying to get to class (even though she wasn't—she was just going to the physics teacher's room because that was where the astronomy club president and her were going to meet) before the warning bell to fourth period even rang.

Erza glanced down at her watch: 12:03. She only had two minutes before the scheduled time.

She hoped the damn Jellal Fernandes—whoever _that_ was—was actually going to be there on time, because she, for sure, was not going to let this opportunity for fundraising down.

Especially not after all those silly emails she had passed with this Jellal person, in which she was totally kissing ass and trying to get the stupid astronomy club to help the club volleyball team out.

Who the hell was in an _astronomy_ club anyway?

Erza zoomed past more students sitting around, finishing the last bites of their lunch sandwiches.

Up ahead, two people—Natsu and Gray—were obnoxiously sitting across from each other in the narrow hallway, stretching out their legs all the way and blocking the entire width of the hallway.

"Move your legs!" she commanded them, kicking both of them and making her way across to the other side of the hall.

"Hey, watch where you're going, Erza!" Gray yelled after her. "You wanna fight or something?"

"I'm getting fired up!" Natsu added.

Erza tsked, turning around for a brief moment. "I'll fight you another time!" she declared.

"Oh, is that Erza backing down?"

She gritted her teeth. She would never live up to this from those goofballs from the rest of her life.

"Yes," she finally admitted and then went on her way while the two clapped each other's hands in their supposed victory.

She needed to get to this meeting, otherwise, all the volleyballs' dreams and hopes to making it to the Grand Volleyball Tournament—without being uncool and being dropped off by their parents—were gone and all their sacrifices and efforts to make pastries and sell them would have gone in vain!

Erza most certainly, as the president of the club, was not going to be the one to let them down.

She looked ahead of her—seeing an ambling student walking straight in the middle of the hallway, at a _much_ slower pace than she would have liked.

She had to push the kid out of the way—for the sake of her nakama!

"Get out of my way!" she growled, shoving the kid to the right while she swerved to the left.

"Huh?" the kid said, turning around—

And then before she knew it, she had collided into him– her textbooks landing in various places around them, and a swirl of a mix of her school assignments, papers, school notes, and random doodles on looseleaf papers raining down on them.

"Kya!" she yelped, crashing down.

She looked up, realizing that she had completely fallen on top of the other kid. She glared at the student to scold him for making her late another thirty seconds for this _very_ important meeting with the astronomy club president. Who was he to not get the fuck out of way when—

And for a moment, his blue hair and soft brown eyes were too cute for her to slay harsh words onto. She hiccupped silently before beating back a blush.

"S-sorry!" she exclaimed, picking herself up and starting to pick up her stuff from off the floor.

Ugh, but screw this kid! He was definitely the cutest person she had seen in her life but he _definitely_ couldn't get in the way of renting a private charter bus for her club team!

"Next time, g-get out of my way!" she scolded him, stammering.

"Sorry, he meekly said, handing her the rest of her things.

She stole another glance at his handsome face and then scoffed, quickly pulled back her hair neatly as she could before scurrying off, checking the time.

When Erza finally made it to the physics teacher's room, she breathed a sigh of relief, alleviated that she had made it—not quite on the dot, but definitely within the minute that they were supposed to meet. She stepped into the room and put her things down on one of the tables as the clock turned to 12:06, not seeing anyone except the teacher at his desk, who looked up at her.

"Oh you're Erza, right? The captain of the volleyball team?"

"Yeah," she replied, immediately suspicious that she was the only high school student in the room there.

Don't tell her that this Jellal Fernandes kid was _late_.

Ugh—to describe all the terrible things that could have happened in one day – she could barely believe her luck. She had taken the time and the effort to actually get to the meeting place on time and now this astronomy lame club president wasn't even there to appreciate that.

"Oh Jellal just texted me to tell you that he would be late," the teacher said, reading off his phone. "He said that he got mixed up in something with a girl on the way here. He'll be here in just a minute."

Erza turned around and rolled her eyes. Mixed up in something with a girl? Give her a break—was this Jellal Fernandes kid actually being serious with her about setting up this fundraising event? For him to be able to be late to a meeting because he had some girl trouble…

What a douche.

She hoped whatever girl that he got mixed up with kicked his ass.

"So, Erza, was it?" the physics teacher resumed their conversation. "What made you decide to work with the astronomy team anyway? It's a rather strange combination of group, isn't it?"

"Indeed," she agreed, turning herself back around and pretending that she hadn't just been badmouthing the astronomy club president under her breath. "To be honest, I thought it was just an opportunity for both of us to work mutually on something that neither of us had."

The physics teacher raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Money right? The astronomy club needs funding as well."

The physics teacher shrugged. "To be honest, I'm their faculty advisor and even I'm not sure why the captain even agreed to working with you girls." He pondered a moment. "The club doesn't usually do any events in the fall—most of their stargazing events take place in the winter and spring so they don't really need the funding right now…and they've never had trouble acquiring it from the school."

Erza held back an exasperated sigh. The _stargazing_ event was able to get funding from the school but not transportation to a super-important club volleyball game?

Was stargazing really all that popular?

"Sorry, I'm late!" a young man's voice slipped in through the door. "Erza, was it?"

Ugh, _finally_. She swiveled on her heel, her hands folded over her chest and turned to face the latecomer.

He rushed in immediately, coming up to her to immediately apologize with a shameful smile. "On my way here, there was some girl that—"

They stared at each other for a moment.

"…bumped into me."

Erza's face horrified. "O-oh! I'm so sorry! That was _you_!"

"Oh," he replied, putting his hand behind his head and shyly smiling. "I guess it was nice to meet you. I didn't even realize that I bumped into you—"

"No, I'm the one that's sorry!" she insisted.

 _Fuck_. She had messed up—what if because of _that_ he wouldn't be willing to work with them on the fundraising event anymore?!

"Not at all, it definitely was my fault for not getting out of your way, and I should have been here on time anyway," he replied.

Erza shook her head. "No, no, I'm sorry!" she apologized, remembering all the regretful things that happened just a couple of minutes ago—from shoving him to crushing into him to outright cursing him out and telling him to get out of the way.

He laughed. "It's okay. Seriously."

She blinked a couple times, calming herself down. "S-so, you'll still work with us on a fundraising event?"

"Yeah, of course," he said, looking over at the physics teacher. "Jura-sensei, you've already approved of the date that I sent you in that email CCing Erza, right?"

The teacher confirmed.

"Perfect," Jellal said, grinning, before turning back to Erza—who was still looking very distraught at the whole situation.

"Th-That's great!" she said, fighting her will to just crawl up into a corner and die of embarrassment.

How could she have been such an _asshole_ to this nice and _incredibly cute_ boy?!

"So, uh…sorry about that—this meeting wasn't really that necessary," he explained to her, biting his lip. "I guess I just wanted an in-person confirmation of who we were going to be working with…but I guess if we're working with you, things should turn out just fine, right?"

She laughed nervously. "Yeah."

"And I also wanted to tell you that even though we're doing this joint event, I wanted to give your club all the funding that we get from it—we don't have to split the revenue, and we'll give it all to you," he added.

Her heart stopped. "Wh-what?"

"Your team needs to get to the Grand Volleyball Tournament, right?" Jellal asked. "I mean, we don't need the money, so I thought it would just be something nice for us to do."

Again, _how_ could she have been such an _asshole_ to this nice and _incredibly cute_ boy?!

"H-how can I ever make up for this?" she stammered. "I totally just…wow, thank you."

He watched her for a moment with a gentle smile on his face, and she tried not to blush—both from embarrassment and from the fact that this cute boy was looking at her.

"Well…" he started, and he looked down at the floor, shuffling his feet. "I guess we'll need some help with flyering later on in the year."

"Of course!" she immediately agreed.

"And, um…" Jellal looked back at her, smiling—and was he _blushing?_ —and biting his lower lip before continuing. "Maybe we can have another…meeting?" he asked. "I'd like to meet with you again soon."

Her eyes widened and she felt her body freeze, her cheeks go completely red. "S-sure!"

"And…we probably don't need Jura-sensei to oversee us the next time, right?" he asked, winking.

* * *

 **Teehee. :P**

 **This one was definitely longer than I expected—probably spent a lot of time building up the back story, but I presume the mental jabber is characteristic of high school students. :P**

 **Anyway, let me know what you think! I don't think I've done a high school setting in a looooong while. Let me know if you think I got that YA-ness right!**

 **thir13enth**


	7. goodnight

**Another one-shot for Jerza Love Fest Week 2015! Prompt: lock.**

 **Enjoy! (And let me know what you think! It's been a bit quiet in this series...:P)**

* * *

 **goodnight**

* * *

When Erza left the keys in her car and slammed the car door shut—realizing that her pocket was empty and what was supposed to be in it was on the passenger side seat—she knew that it going to be a bad day.

Fuck, she cursed to herself. She had just locked herself out of her own ride home.

Sighing, she decided to worry about calling roadside assistance later. At the moment, she had to prepare for her first night at work at Magnolia, the most famous five-star restaurant on the peninsula.

Smoothing down her shirt and workpants, she looked up at the high-end restaurant at the end of the parking lot and self-prepared herself to make a good appearance, readying herself for the abuses of the workday.

She had really only sought out the job at Magnolia because she needed the extra money. Up to this point, she had been sitting precariously on her diminishing amount of savings, living in a high real estate area while getting paid shit for her hospital residency, not to mention starting to pay off loans for medical school.

And unfortunately for the restaurant, with all honesty, she was most certainly the worst employee that could have joined their kitchen team.

Not only did she lack the passion of going into the fine dining business in general, but worse she lacked any remote stroke of experience in it—even though she had assured the restaurant manager, with a wide smile across her face and a nod of her head, that she indeed knew how to dice onions in seconds and how to wash dishes properly, when she actually had no idea how to even boil water.

So, as Erza approached the entrance of her new workplace, she had no idea what she was getting herself into—but she was most certain that she needed the cash that would be provided by this extra part-time.

She opened the glass door, approaching the reception table, where the person standing by greeted her.

And unfortunately for Erza, it happened to be her boss—the manager himself, Mr. Makarov Dreyar.

He at first gave her a bright smile as she walked in, thinking she was a customer, but upon seeing her scarlet hair and the naïve look on her face, his face immediately darkened and he took her aside.

"What are you doing here?" he hissed at her.

Despite his much shorter stature than her, she still somehow managed to feel extremely intimidated—probably because her paycheck was to be signed up by the white-haired and balding man.

"Uh…" she answered. "I'm here to join for the first day!"

"Use the _back_ entrance! Who do you think you are—walking in here like you're a high-class citizen of this organization?"

His demeanor suddenly changed when a couple behind Erza waltzed in through the glass doors, a woman cradling a neatly-trimmed poodle in her arms.

"And how do you do today, sir?" the manager asked, pleasantly and professionally, and after checking them off their reservation and sending them with a table with one of the servers, he glared back at Erza—who was still standing there—making a shooing motion with his hand.

"I-I don't know where the back entrance is!" she admitted, looking down and waiting for the scolding.

Mr. Dreyar groaned, facepalming. He looked over his shoulder, snapping his fingers at another server in the background. "Hey, you!" he called out. "Blue Boy, come here!"

Said Blue Boy—likely called so because of his blue hair—immediately came to the older man's side. "Yes, sir?"

"Get this new employee to the back where she belongs."

Rude, Erza couldn't help but think.

"Of course, sir," the blue-haired server politely replied, and then took a look over at Erza. "Hey," he greeted to her, coming over to her side.

"Hey," she replied. She blinked a couple of times.

She had to admit that Blue Boy had looks to kill and—skimming up and down his slim figure—an evenly matched heavenly body to go with. She quickly pulled herself out of staring.

"What's your name?" he asked her as he led her out the door, opening it for her.

Ugh, and he was a polite gentleman, too.

That, or he just happened to reach the door first.

"Erza," she answered. "Erza Scarlet."

"Scarlet?" he repeated, laughing a bit. "That name suits you."

"Yeah?"

"It's pretty—like your hair," he explained, with a soft smile.

Her cheeks flushed the same color, and she was glad she was under the cover of the outside street lights surrounding Magnolia.

They rounded the corner toward the back of the restaurant, and Erza smelled the encroaching smell of garbage. Blue Boy guided her to the back of Magnolia, unsurprisingly with several dumpsters and several garbage bins, complete with a scattering of raccoons and stray dogs, which Blue Boy shooed away as they came to the metal door at the back of the restaurant.

"Don't worry too much," Blue Boy suddenly told her, reaching for the handle of the metal door. "Mr. Dreyar is strict with everyone. He runs a tight ship but that's because he has to—so it's nothing on you," he assured her. "He's like that with everyone."

She nodded, adding, "Except for rich patrons," under her breath.

Blue Boy laughed. "Yeah," he agreed, before opening the door to the backend of the restaurant.

He motioned her in, the smell of onions and herbs filling the air—and for two seconds, the alluring smell of the food within and the sight of a handsome young man beckoning her to come in made her new nightly part-time job seem not such a bad choice after all.

But then she was introduced to the head chef.

"Hey, Minerva," Blue Boy called out. "This is Erza, your new kitchen assistant."

And Minerva was gorgeous—raven black hair perfectly rolled up into a bun at the back of her head and her white chef attire hugging every curve of her body graciously—but Erza quickly learned that the supermodel woman was just as intimidating as the restaurant manager himself, and was running just as tight of a ship at the backend of the restaurant and leading her fleet of chefs and assistants like a veteran army general.

The head chef clicked her heel on the tile kitchen floor as she turned to face Erza, her charcoal eyes immediately eyeing the wide-eyed scarlet woman in front of her.

After a full ten seconds of studying Erza, Minerva leaned forward and sniffed the junction between Erza's collarbone and right shoulder.

Minerva scoffed, standing back up to her full glorious height.

"You don't smell like you've ever cut an onion in your life," she remarked.

Erza stuttered, not sure what to say in the presence of someone so grand. "Uh…"

"I can't believe the manager hired someone like you," her sharp alto voice snapped.

Blue Boy stepped in, saving Erza from further destruction. "Erza's very qualified," he insisted. "She's worked in another five-star restaurant before coming here and she specifically wanted to work under you, which is why she transferred here."

"Oh yeah?" Minerva asked. But the head chef didn't seem to take the flattery very seriously. "Well then," she said. She looked across the kitchen at room tucked in the back. "You'll start from the very bottom and prove your worth in my kitchen. We have some dishes that need to be washed." She looked at Erza, folding her arms. "Surely you can at least do that, Red Head?"

Erza nodded her head vigorously. "Of course!" she squeaked.

"Jellal, can you send her over there?"

"Sure," he volunteered. "Come on," he told Erza, leading her to the room at the back.

Once out of Minerva's sight, Erza tugged Blue Boy's arm. "Hey!" she said. "Jellal!"

He turned suddenly—surprised that she had called him by name. "Huh?"

"Why'd you say that stuff about me?" she asked him. "All that stuff about me working in a five-star restaurant and everything—you don't even know me! You were lying!"

He shrugged, giving her a smile. "Well, you seemed like you needed some help there."

"I-I've never worked in a restaurant before!" she abruptly admitted to him.

"But you had to be qualified enough to get the dishwashing job right?" he asked her. "I mean, the manager didn't just hire you because you were pretty."

Erza would have blushed, but she was immediately intimidated by the sight of what was in the supposed dishwashing room that Jellal was leading her to.

In all her life, she had never seen such large sinks. And there were three of them—the first filled two-thirds of the way up with steamy soapy opaque water, the second with a long overhanging nozzle, and the third filled halfway with water that had a slight greenish-blue tint to it.

Jellal looked back at her, studying her face. "So here we are. You ready to start your first night here?"

She continued to stare blankly at the three basins.

After a silent moment, he laughed softly, crossing his arms and facing her. "You don't know how to do this do you? You lied about to the manager when you interviewed, huh?"

She turned to face him, her gaze completely serious. "Honestly, I'm just doing this for the money."

Upon hearing this, he gave her a big smile before he stepped over to her, leaning close.

"Come here, let me tell you a secret."

Ignoring the flush of her face, she moved even closer toward him, her heart fluttering as his mouth got neared her cheek, his breath tickling her ear.

"I didn't know how to do this when I first got here either," he whispered, with a mischievous grin.

And then he stood back up straight, while she tried to hold back a deep blush.

"Here, let me show you," he continued, walking toward the counter behind them and slapping on some gloves from the glove dispenser in the corner. She followed him, doing the same.

"Servers will come in and stack used plates on this counter," he explained, taking a plate from the top of the closest stack and showing her the mess of pasta and red marinara sauce left on it. "You'll want to scrap everything off the plate using this thing," and he grabbed a small curved tool from the counter, "and dump all the food scraps into the compost bin here."

"Then, you'll want to come over to the first sink and use the brush in here to get all the oils and messy stuff off," he went on. "You'll want to be careful though—all the water in these sinks is pretty hot."

She watched him scrub the plate off, before moving onto the next sink.

"Here, you use the high-pressure water to rinse down the plates," he said, reaching forward for the nozzle above his head and splaying the water over the very clean-looking plate. "And this is technically the last process that you have before the dish goes into the third and last sink—so you have to make sure that it's super clean at the end of this round."

Jellal then took the shiny wet plate and dipped it into the greenish-blue tinged water. "This sink has sanitizing chemicals that finish the dishwashing. After this step, you can't do anything to the plate—this step is part of a health regulation, so you'll want to put the dish on the drying rack here." And he tilted the now finished plate into one of the slots.

She nodded. "Okay," she said.

"Of course, once you get better, you'll be able to wash several dishes at the same time," he said, facing her again, and leaning over the edge of one of the sinks. "But you'll need some practice first, right?" he asked, winking at her.

Erza coughed, struck by a sudden wave of attraction. "And after the dishes are dry, do I have to put them somewhere?"

"You can stack them here," he said, strolling over to the other side of the room and touching a roller cart—specially made to fit the identical plates and bowls and utensils. "But the morning shift will collect the dry dishes the next day, so you don't have to worry about it."

"Got it," she said, registering all the information in her head.

"Well, I guess you should get started then, huh?" he said, pulling off the gloves from his hands and tossing them into the trash under the sink. "You don't want to be here all night now, do you?"

She laughed, "Yeah I guess."

Erza loosened up her fingers and headed toward the counter. "Thanks," she told Jellal. "Thanks for helping me out tonight."

"Yup," he said, and to her surprise, he didn't leave the dishwashing room, instead leaning back, one foot against the wall.

"Thanks," she repeated, giving him a stiff smile, waiting for him to leave. "I've got it."

He smiled. "Okay, show me," he challenged.

She swallowed hard.

Honestly she just wanted some time alone so she could attempt to half-ass the entire process without a very handsome man watching her every move.

She was definitely going to embarrass herself.

"Alright then," she said, as confidently as she could, grabbing another plate off the top of the stack of dirty plates from the counter top. She quickly located the food scraper and swiped the remaining crumbs of what looked like steak and salad into the compost, trying her best to ignore the fact that Jellal was just a few yards away from her, observing.

Erza swiveled around on her heel, as swiftly as she could and stepped over to the three sinks, reaching for the brush from the first sink and going through the same motions as she had seen him do just moments before, scrubbing extra hard to make sure all the fine particles of food got off the plate.

Alright, so far so good, she thought to herself, as her hands moved to the second sink. She looked up, tiptoeing a bit to reach for the nozzle—heeding no attention to the small chuckle that she heard emerging from him on the other side of the room—and bringing it down to the plate.

Shit.

How was she supposed to turn the water on?

Pretending like everything was going fine, Erza discreetly tugged the nozzle—she could have sworn he just tugged at it and the water came out…—but to no avail.

Jellal was quick to catch on, and he strolled over to her side, laughing softly and reaching for the nozzle himself, putting his warm hand over hers and bringing the whole contraption down to her eye level.

"You just press right here, okay?" he explained, lightly tapping a small red button at the middle.

She nodded, letting his hand do the rest of the work—her hand still underneath—angling the nozzle toward the plate and then pressing the trigger.

"Kya!" she gasped, when the high pressure water came spraying out of the nozzle, creating a small ricochet at her hand, some small droplets of water reflecting off the plate and landing on her face.

She stepped backwards into his body, rubbing her face with her upper sleeve.

He laughed, gently turning her around, lifting her chin up with one hand and with the other hand, pulling a soft cloth towel out of his uniform pocket and drying her cheek off with it.

"There," he said, tenderly, his hazelnut eyes glancing at her lips before meeting her eyes. "I think you got it now."

Wordless, she nodded, feeling all sorts of giggly happy feelings coming up from inside her.

"Thank you," she said.

"No problem," he breathed, bringing his hands back to himself, before he looked at her once more and started to take his leave. "I'll see you around, Erza," he said, giving her a short wave.

"Bye!" she answered back, vigorously waving back—but then suddenly felt very awkward and stupid for doing so.

Okay, Erza, she told herself, shaking herself out of lovey-dovey mode. She had to stop thinking about his whispered breaths and warm hands touching her and get to the cleaning dishes—otherwise she would never make it out of her on time.

And so continued the rest of Erza's night—dish after dish.

Every now and then, a familiar face and blue hair would come in, bringing in another stack of dishes and winking at her—and she would have to clutch the plates she had at hand very tightly, otherwise they threatened to slip out of her soapy hands and fall and shatter to the floor.

Of course, seeing him made the hours pass by more quickly, as she anticipated seeing him with every round of more dishes to wash.

She practiced smiling cutely back at him for when he would come in to deliver more dishes with yet another wink—although sometimes she would accidentally give another server an unprecedented flirtatious smile and make a fool out of herself.

And so the night went on, until finally—

"Good job," Minerva simply said, looking at the racks of pristinely cleaned dishes lying in the drying area. "Looks like you're worth more than you look." She crossed her arms and stared at Erza directly in the eye—as if testing Erza's resoluteness to not break eye contact.

Finally after ten seconds: "You're dismissed."

With a final clack of her heel, the head chef walked out of the dishwashing room, letting Erza slump back against the sink and give out a big sigh of relief.

Completely tired out from her night's labor but satisfied about a job well done, the scarlet-haired woman hummed a happy tune, heading out the back door of Magnolia, simultaneously untying her hair and shaking it loose as she approached her car.

But then she remembered her car was still locked.

She groaned to herself.

Right, she was in the middle of having a bad day. And it wasn't over yet.

Erza punched in the speed dial for her car insurance company, raising the phone to her ear, ready to speak with an agent.

"Hi, how can I help you?"

"Um, I got locked out of my car and would like to request some help to unlock it," she said, as smoothly as she could. "I think I have one last free roadside assistance available."

"Hm…let me check that," the person on the other side of the phone said, keyboard clacking in the distance. "Um…Ms. Scarlet, right?"

Erza confirmed.

"Actually that doesn't seem like you have any promotional roadside assistance services available. I believe you utilized your last one about two months ago," the voice replied. "I'm sorry, we'll have to charge this into your plan."

Charge?

Erza quickly reminded herself that she still needed to have money to pay for next month's rent.

"Oh...um, actually—" she stuttered. "No, don't."

"Sorry?"

"Don't. Don't charge it. I…I don't need it."

"…you don't need to get into your car, miss?"

"No, no…" she said, quickly coming up with a lie. "I found my keys actually! They were in my pocket the whole time." She fake laughed. "Thank you so much for you time and have a great day!"

She quickly hung up the call.

Ugh, what was she going to do? She sighed, relieved that she had at least she parked in one of the restaurant parking spots and not on the street where she'd get fined.

She would have to get a taxi home, she determined, unlocking her phone once again.

Just this one time, she didn't remember _any_ numbers for taxi services.

She cursed her memory, before flipping open a web window on her smartphone. She thumbed around a little, but then suddenly her phone screen went black—and all she was left with was seeing herself in the onyx reflection of the screen, a betrayed look on her face.

Erza couldn't believe her luck.

She groaned, sitting onto the pavement next to her car, moping and putting her face into her hands—which still smelled like sanitizing solution from all the dishwashing earlier that night.

What a terrible terrible day. What would she do now?

"Erza?"

She looked up—surprised.

"J-Jellal?" she asked, suddenly very conscious of the fact that she was rolled up like a ball sitting on the concrete, looking very helpless.

"What are you still doing here?" the blue-haired man asked, offering his hand to help her up.

She took it, feeling his strong grip pull up her to her feet.

"Um…I…" she stammered.

"You don't know how to open your car?" he teased, very obviously amused.

"No," she replied, taking a breath before starting. "I just locked myself out of my car before work today…and I was going to call roadside assistance but I realized that I ran out of free ones…I'm kinda broke so I'm stuck here on the curb…and then I was trying to call a taxi but my phone died."

Erza folded her arms, looking down at her feet.

"I'm sorry about that," he said.

She sighed. "I've just had a bad day," she concluded.

"Well…if you've had a bad day, then maybe I can at least show you how to have a good night," he said, rather huskily.

Or at least, she thought he said it rather huskily.

Confused, she looked up at him. "Huh?"

He simply smiled. "Come on," he said, offering her his hand. "Step one, follow the kind server that helped you at your new workplace all night to his car so that he can take you home."

She bit her bottom lip, thinking for a moment. "Okay," she agreed. She looked down at his hand before hesitantly placing her hand in his.

His smile widened and he closed his fingers around hers, enveloping her hand with the same warmth as from earlier that night. He gently pulled her closer to him, walking her over to his sedan.

She didn't fail to notice that he shifted his hand around hers to thread his fingers between hers.

She didn't mind.

"Step two," he continued, beeping his car unlocked. "Get into the passenger side and make yourself comfortable."

They slid into the car from opposite ends.

He turned toward her, while closing the car door. "And don't forget to buckle up."

"Oh please," she said, challenging him and facing him directly. "I'm not a kid."

This time, he looked away first, with a bashful smile, starting the engine and passing her his phone.

"Step three, type your address in the driver's phone so that he may get you there."

"As long as you don't stalk me in the future," she deadpanned, taking his phone and doing just that.

"Of course not," he murmured.

And when they rolled up to Erza's apartment, the quiet small talk chatter they were having on the way there simmered to a close.

He stopped the car, standing for a moment in the middle of the road.

She broke the silence. "Thank you," she said, turning her head to face him. "Seriously. You've helped me out so much today. I really don't know how to repay you."

Jellal smiled. "Don't worry about it. We all have our bad days. I've definitely had my share of them."

"Well…when that day comes, I'll definitely help you out," she declared, opening the car door. "I really appreciate this."

"It's really not a problem, Erza," he said.

She gave him a final smile before stepping out the car, but he suddenly grabbed her arm.

She looked back at him, confused.

"Wait," he said, licking his lips quickly. "You forgot step four."

"Step four to having a good night?" she asked, bright-eyed and amused.

He nodded, slowly leaning over to the passenger side of the car.

"Step four…" he said slowly. "Kiss the driver on the cheek for getting you home safely."

They stared into each other's eyes for a moment, before he laughed and pulled his eyes away from her, turning back to the steering wheel.

"I'm totally kidding. I'll see you tomorrow—"

She interrupted him with a kiss.

"There," she said, pulling away from his surprised lips. "Now _you_ have a good night too."

* * *

 **Good lord, it's finally doneeeee! This one-shot turned out to be so much longer than I expected and I definitely did not have the time today! Also I had such a terrible time trying to figure out a title. Ugh.**

 **And yeah, yeah, I know it's weird that I used Minerva and Makarov as the head chef and manager respectively, haha. But for some reason they were the first two that came to mind when I was writing this. I won't question my muse.**

 **Anyway, whatcha think? Let me know!**

 **thir13enth**


	8. midnight

**To note, I have shit knowledge about how castles and royalty and medieval-like class systems work, so forgive me if I misuse a word or a title here and there—and definitely let me know so I can take the learning opportunity!**

 **I thought I would also make use of some existing headcanons about Jellal's origins from Alvarez. I thus present Prince Jellal:**

* * *

 **midnight**

* * *

"You know, your Royal Highness, after 25 years of pestering from your father about finding a future queen, I would think that tonight's ballroom party would be of utmost importance to you."

The blue-haired prince looks up, placing the thick leather book that he has been perusing down onto his lap and leans back into the royal red satin cushions of his seat. He rests his right elbow on the arm chair and supports his tired head with a closed fist.

His golden brown eyes meets his stewardess' deep violets. "You never fail to remind me of my duties, Ultear," he says, with a soft smile.

"Not since you came out of your mother's womb screaming hell, no, sir," the older woman replies, leaning a broom against the walls of the library room before re-tying her long raven hair. After a moment, she asks, "Now, is your Royal Highness going to get ready for tonight soon? Or will I have to drag him all the way there?"

"Alright, alright, I'll go," he says, closing his book with a soft slap. He stands up the moment after, to his full height and reaching up to replace the book back to its rightful place on the shelf. "But I have no fashion sense," he adds, swiveling around to face his caretaker. "You'll have to help me out…otherwise I won't have a chance with the Princess of Fiore tonight, right?"

She gives him a stern look, admonishing his still very child-like irresponsibility, but her furrowed eyebrows and frown softens when he offers her a shameless smile, which she subsequently returns.

"Well if you put it that way, your Royal Highness, you're absolutely right—I can't possibly trust you to dress yourself," she clucks, with an exasperation of a mother.

And indeed, Ultear knows exactly what clothing suits Prince Jellal the best. She had picked out a fresh white suit for the young man, complete with golden shoulder pads and a matching belt, and chose to equip him with a slim sword with a simple black sheath engraved with the kingdom's crest.

The stewardess steps backwards, looking the prince up and down before giving a nod of approval.

He then looks down at himself as well, fingering the soft material of his attire. "Sometimes I wonder if it would have been easier if I had a distant cousin or relative to marry," he muses thoughtlessly.

Ultear huffs. "Don't take the freedom your father so graciously gave to you for granted, your Royal Highness," she chides. "You wouldn't have been happy if it had turned out that way, right?"

Jellal sighs, heavy with the weight of his birthright. "I'm not particularly happy about the responsibility of finding the next queen, either," he replies softly. "All these women that I'm sent to meet are just attracted to my power and status. The last thing I would want is someone fawning over my crown and not me."

"Oh dear, do you actually think you're that handsome for that kind of adoration, your Royal Highness?"

He laughs. "You can murder with your humor, Ultear."

"Especially with that dreadful tattoo of yours," she scoffs. "Just once when you were young, I let you to play with the squires one afternoon and you come back with that horrid ink on your visage."

The prince unconsciously raises his hand to his right temple, shirking off the insult to injury as much as possible. "Maybe I want something for the Kingdom of Alvarez to remember me by," he excuses.

"Well you won't be remembered by the kingdom if you can't even find a suitor—let alone dress yourself up for a ballroom night party, your Highness," Ultear replies quickly with a sharp tongue, bending down and placing black boots next to his feet. "Wear these," she commands of him.

"I just want someone that isn't motivated by the money and glory to bring herself to me," he continues, leaning over a bit to put on the shoes, balancing the hilt of his sword against his hip to not let it bump into his shin. "Someone not dependent on the crown to know her own worth as a person, you know?"

The stewardess waits for the royal son to stand back up, dressed and ready for the activities of the night, before criticizing him.

"Aren't you being a bit fickle, your Royal Highness? You say you want a woman independent from society's expectations but you're asking quite a bit from her yourself, aren't you?"

Upon hearing this, Jellal quickly realizes the fault of his own words and he flushes a little, stammering, "You're so wise, Ultear," he confides.

Ultear smiles, and she heads towards the exit of the room. "Well, you should get going so that you don't miss the reception," she says, while opening the door for him. "I'm sure you'll find the Princess of Fiore quite fascinating. I hear about her a lot in the court gossip."

The blue-haired prince doubts this, but he gives his long-time caretaker a smile.

"Thank you, Ultear," he says. "I'll do my best."

He makes his way down to the grand ballroom, nodding to some of the court jesters and the various servants that he passes, plastering an optimistic smile onto his face when they jokingly wish him good luck in finding a wife by the end of the night.

Following the orchestral music to the ceremony, he admires the grand opulence that decorates the hallways, growing in value as he nears the ballroom. He wonders if what he had ever done—aside from being born to the right couple—to deserve such a wondrous and carefree life.

Jellal takes a deep breath in and out and straightens out his clothing, before he pushes aside the curtain separating the royal platform and the hallway behind it.

"Ah!" the ceremony announcer exclaims upon seeing his all-too-familiar blue hair of the kingdom's heir apparent. "And now we have His Royal Highness, Prince Jellal!"

The prince does his best to smile as bright as the sun and to wave enthusiastically to the applauding crowd as he makes his way down to the lower level, where he will join the celebration. He doesn't offer anyone his eyes. He doesn't want to look down upon anyone.

One of the intendants quickly sides up to Jellal as he continues his way downstairs. "Prince!" the white-haired court official greets, with a short bow of his almost balding head.

"Yes, Yajima?"

"The King wants to see you very quickly before you go to mingle with the people," Yajima tells him, and Jellal nods to allow the court official to take him to where his father is sitting, taking wine and chatting happily with some of the nobles.

As he approaches, the nobles take notice and bow their heads towards the heir apparent, standing up and stepping backwards to giving him space. Only then the King notices that his son is coming towards him, and he analyzes the prince up and down as his son comes closer to him.

"Ultear dressed you, I presume?" his father asks him, and when Jellal nods, the king sighs, having expected this to be the case and massages his temples, before adding, "If it wasn't for her, you would have missed the entire reception, probably."

"You know me too well, Father," Jellal admits, almost under his breath.

"Well, get going!" the King of Alvarez tells him in a hiss, soft enough so that the nobles standing off in the distance don't hear the familial conversation. "You do realize that I didn't invite the Royal Family of Fiore here just for their entertainment, right?"

"Yes, sir," he assures his father before turning back to the nobles, whose conversations he had interrupted, and giving them all a greeting for the evening before walking off to join Yajima again, who has been waiting for him.

He feels all of the nobles' eyes on his back, and he tries his best to ignore the extra attention as he receives the intendant again. Yajima nods and then leads him back to the main body of the ceremony, where he subsequently teases Jellal with a good luck before leaving prince to do his own bidding.

Jellal nods, looking around the room, but then quickly catches Yajima's arm before the intendant leaves and leans forward to whisper a question into his ear.

"Actually, Yajima," he admits. "I have no idea who the Princess of Fiore is."

The intendant smiles knowingly before discreetly pointing toward the center of the room. "The Princess of Fiore is the one in the long white dress, your Royal Highness. Do you see her? The one with—"

"Indeed," Jellal replies, his eyes fixating on the young woman's white long dress, accompanied with her long scarlet hair and honey amber skin. "Thank you, Yajima."

Yajima sighs. "Your Royal Highness, with all honesty, you must be the least informed member of the Royal Family that I have ever served for the past two generations—how would you ever survive without court officials plucking and preening at you?"

The prince winks at the older man. "I wouldn't," he says.

"Don't scare her off now," Yajima warns.

Jellal laughs, giving the court official a wave before swimming off into the crowd.

He heads straight for the Princess of Fiore—and as he proceeds further toward the center of the ceremony, attendees step back to get out of his way, all while giving him short bows of their heads and greeting him good evening.

"Prince Jellal!"

"Your Royal Highness!"

He simultaneously nods and smiles as he strides toward the scarlet-haired princess, and the attendants of the party notice right away who he is aiming for, their eyes glancing between him and the Princess of Fiore, and knowing immediately his intentions.

He is upset that he will never be able to discreetly talk to anyone without at least five other people taking notice right away, but he has long ago realized that anything that he does—down to the very foods he eats for breakfast—is a news headline to many commoners in his kingdom.

Jellal hears hushed whispers as he comes close to the white dress-donning princess—the other ceremony-goers creating a circle of space between the two children of royalty.

The princess doesn't realize that he is approaching from behind her until one of the ladies the princess is engaged in conversation with tells her with her eyes.

The Princess of Fiore spins around, and the first thing he is struck by is her wide chocolate brown eyes.

He catches her hand gracefully and kisses the back of it. "Good evening, Princess," he murmurs in a low voice. "Can I have this next dance with you?"

She blushes a deep pink, glancing back at her lady friend, who waves her off and encourages her to take the dance with the prince. The princess looks back at him, blinking and slightly flustered, and nods quickly, giving him permission to take her away.

He smiles and leads her away from the crowd, never letting go of the hand that he has just kissed and never putting it down either. As he takes her through to the other more quiet side of the ballroom, the crowd splits apart to let the newly formed couple through.

The crowd does its best to return to its normal conversations.

And he does his best to lead their way into a slow dance—a waltz back and forth across the marble floor—threading his fingers through her hand and cautiously hovering his other hand over her waist, waiting for her to nod and let him rest his hand over her hip bone.

They step back and forth a couple of times. Her hand makes its way up to his shoulder, and her eyes follow her fair arm up to his full height until she finally meets his eyes.

He gives her a polite smile.

"Y-You are quite forward, your Royal Highness," she tells him, starting the conversation.

He admires her honesty and is surprised by her initiative to speak before him.

"Jellal," he corrects. "My name is Jellal."

"I know that…your Royal Highness," she replies, looking down, shyly.

He doesn't insist that she refer to him by his first name. He determines that she can choose to do that when she is ready.

"I'm sorry I interrupted your conversation with your friend, Princess."

"It's…" she starts. "It's fine…we weren't talking about anything important."

"Really?" he remarks, arching an eyebrow. "May I ask what you were discussing, Princess?"

She bites her bottom lip cutely, and he notes how the color of her pink lips matches the scarlet of her luscious hair and the glow of her still blushing cheeks. "D-Don't call me Princess, your Royal Highness," she says.

"Don't call you Princess?" he asks, gently bringing her body closer to his and sliding his mouth close to her ear. "Why would I ever stop calling a maiden a princess when her beauty demands such a title?"

He is confident in his flirting abilities. After years and years of courting, he finds he is almost at risk of being jaded of such activities.

He holds it together—for her, for tonight, because she truly is of unique beauty, the Princess of Fiore.

He can practically hear her fast beating heart. She takes a breath.

"We were just conversing about how absolutely divine the strawberry shortcake being served is, your Royal Highness," she admits in one exhale, talking into his chest. "I was just about to tell her that it was the best I have ever eaten."

Jellal is surprised that she turned the conversation back around.

But he is even more surprised to hear that she also enjoyed strawberry shortcake.

The prince had always had a sweet tooth—one that Ultear had always scolded him about, warning him that one day he would become too heavy for his horse.

"Well, Princess," he replies. "I have to say that if this is the best shortcake that you've eaten, the Kingdom of Fiore doesn't rival very much with the bakeries of the Kingdom of Alvarez."

He looks down at her for a moment, trying to read her, but she doesn't let him.

He wonders why he is searching so desperately for her eyes.

"I'll need to take you around the kingdom later and give you a taste of what we have here," he adds, softly. "How long will you be visiting, Princess?"

She finally turns her chocolate eyes up to his. "I only have until midnight," she tells him.

He isn't sure if she says that with disappointment, or if she says that to offer a challenge.

Jellal leans in closer to her face. "A pity," he whispers, eyes gazing directly into the windows of her soul. "We'll have to make the most of tonight then."

The princess blushes when she realizes that his intense stare is slowly moving downwards to her lips, and she turns her head to the side, looking away from him.

"Why have we only met now?" he murmurs, as he becomes aware that their feet have stopped moving and his hand that was once tangled in her fingers has slowly begun to loosen, reaching to tuck a strand of her scarlet hair behind her ear.

She slowly begins to turn her face again toward him, and her lips inch deliciously back to where he wants them to be—right in front of his. Her eyes flicker to glance at his lips—

"Your Royal Highness!"

His spine stiffens, and he returns to the revelry of the ballroom—hearing the orchestral music instead of her beating heart, seeing bright white lights instead of her warm brown irises, smelling the spiced meat instead of her light flowery fragrance.

"S-Sorry," he stammers, stepping back one from the princess.

The stern voice calling his name reminds him that such a public display of affection was inappropriate for not only for an heir apparent like himself but also for the scarlet-haired princess.

"—Princess," he adds when he realizes that he's completely neglected to use her honorific.

It is unlike him to forget these kinds of formalities.

He wonders why he forgot.

"I-It's alright," she says. "Your Royal Highness."

Jellal takes a mental snapshot of the princess before he excuses himself and heads towards the faraway voice that had called out to him.

He knows he's in trouble.

Because it's Ultear.

His stewardess had seemed to have finished her daily tasks, having changed into a simple gown for the rest of the night. She pops a small chunk of meat, taking it by the toothpick, from the offering table discreetly, chewing it as fiercely as he imagined she would him, by the looks of it.

"What are you doing, Jellal?" she asks him bluntly, pointing a toothpick at him.

She had used his first name. He is definitely in trouble.

"It's going well, Ultear," he reports. "The Princess of Fiore and I are getting along quite well."

Her eyes narrow. "You and who?"

"The Princess of Fiore," he repeats, stepping closer to his caretaker, as he doesn't want to embarrass himself in front of the crowd while he is talking to the older woman.

"Oh?" she challenges, raising her eyebrow. "Show me her, your Royal Highness."

Jellal turns around. "She's—"

And then he realizes that he has lost sight of her—there is no sign of her scarlet hair anywhere.

He turns back around to his stewardess.

"Gone," she completes his sentence.

He looks at clock. It's past midnight.

Where had the time gone?

"She's gone because you were busy courting some _other_ woman!" Ultear admonishes him. "The King of Fiore was so upset that he had sailed all the way to Alvarez and gotten his daughter dressed all elegantly to be left standing alone waiting for a prince that spent the entire night ignoring her!"

"What—"

"Your Royal Highness—she was the _blonde_ woman wearing the white dress."

His eyes widen and Jellal realizes that he's made a terrible mistake.

Probably a worse mistake than the time that he forgot where the other bathroom was when his personal one was being renovated—and then subsequently lost his way around the castle.

Probably a worse mistake than the time that he switched the salad fork with the dinner fork and made a fool of himself in front of the Alverez nobles.

And most definitely a worse mistake than the time he wore an empty sheath—no sword equipped—and went out into town for a spar.

"That poor redhead was probably so confused that you even approached her in the first place!" Ultear continue to chastise. She massaged her temples. "Yajima told me that he thought he had communicated very well with you about who the Princess of Fiore was. But it seems that you weren't listening carefully."

Jellal remembers briefly that he had interrupted Yajima in the middle of a sentence.

He regrets not listening to the court intendant all the way to the end.

He especially regrets it later in the night when the King looks at him and just sighs.

The prince falls to bed that night, covering his eyes with his hands in shame. But he cannot help but recall to memory her scarlet hair, and he could not help but hope that fate would bring them back to each other's arms.

And hopefully they would have more than just a minute together.

Scarlet, he determines. She may not have been the Princess of Fiore, but she was certainly the Scarlet Princess in his memories.

He wonders if he should try to find her. He wonders how he would find her.

Jellal had read once of a story like this in the library before—where the prince became enchanted by a mysterious and beautiful woman who had to run off by midnight, leaving just a glass slipper. The prince had then went around the entire kingdom, trying the slipper on all the women to find the one that he had fallen in love with that fated night.

But alas Jellal had no shoe, and all the prince knew—

Was that she liked strawberry shortcake too.

* * *

 **Hm, well that was an interesting piece to attempt to write—the dialogue is definitely most different than what I'm used to writing and I had to utilize a little bit more time than usual.**

 **Whatcha think? Let me know! ;)**


	9. tattoo heart

**This...this is going to be rated a _very high T_. (Also to note, I naturally curse a lot, so if actually ends up being worse than a T... I'm very sorry.)**

 **For Jerza Love Fest Week 2015. Bonus prompt: tattoo. Featuring some Crime Sorciere favorites.**

 **I was feeling a little dark grunge-y today—listening to some heavy industrial metal, so this turned very AU.** ** _Unforgivably_** **AU.** **But I had fun with it (albeit struggled because I didn't know where I was going) and I hope you'll have just as much fun reading? *nervous laughter***

 **I...I don't know why I wrote this. I apologize for the chaos that will come.**

* * *

 **tattoo heart**

* * *

"You should just fucking tell her, asshole," Cobra suddenly says, catching Jellal stare across the bar.

Jellal snaps his eyes back to the maroon-haired punk. "Shut up," he snarls.

"Cobra's right, and you know it," Angel adds, before blowing a smoke ring before replacing the golden cigarette holder back into her mouth. "You might as well before you get shot by the boss."

"I'm not going to get shot by the boss," Jellal shoots back to the white-haired woman sitting next to him. He looks at the tobacco in her right hand and smirks. "And if anything, you'll probably die before I do, with you sucking in all that trash."

She ignores his health advice. "You never know—you've only been a soldier for six months," she reminds him, tapping ash onto his shoulder. "The pawns are the most likely to go—don't you know how the game of chess goes?"

"I know exactly how the fucking game goes," he retorts, looking back at the redhead. "That's why I know I have no chance with that queen."

"It can't be helped. She's one of the consiglieres—been in the family for all of us put together," Cobra tells him. "If you keep staring at her, she'll put in a reward for your head."

"Nah, she likes it," the blue-haired pawn says, a hint of a smile on his chiseled jaw. He tilts his heard further to give himself a better look at her—memorizing every single one of the curves that he can see through the plunging neckline of her black backless dress, and imagining every other part of her that isn't visible to his charcoal eyes. "She seems like a woman that wants everyone around her drooling."

"Then fucking do it, bastard," Cobra resolves. "Go get her and see if she's that kind of a woman."

"Yeah?" Jellal asks, fueled by his fellow soldier. A sly smirk crawls over his lips.

"I bet half my commission that you won't be able to do it," Angel suddenly remarks.

"In that case, I'll put down all my damn commission in the same pot," Cobra adds.

"Fuck you," he growls, and he looks over his shoulder at the maiden once more before he bites his bottom lip and turns his head back to the other two. "You know, just because of your shit, I'm going to fucking do it."

"That's my boy," the maroon-haired encourages, sliding a shot to him. "Take the cheer."

Jellal takes the liquor, letting it burn down his throat, before slamming it back down onto the table. He waits a moment for his blood to pick up the poison before picking himself up to his feet. The alcohol is hot as his lust, and he feels oddly empowered and enabled by the buzz.

"You fucking watch," he threatens, pointing at both of them. "I'll fucking show you what I'm capable of."

"Oh, I'll keep an ear open," Cobra assures him.

Angel gives him a wink.

He takes their unsaid support and strolls over to redhead, swerving past the other drunkards in the bar and feeling the heavy slow beat of the trashy music through his body.

She is already hot as sex from afar.

Even closer, she's irresistible.

He admires her flushed skin under the limelight, her perfect hair tossed over her half-bare shoulder, her throat when she swallowed as she took her drink, her slim legs and heel-pumped calves, her toned arms and experienced hands, the mysterious tattoo that he still hasn't figured out—

She was the mafia queen and it was clear in the way that she carried herself, written in every step that she takes and every nod of respect she receives.

He wonders how many people she's fucked—and honestly he doesn't care the number as long as he's one of them.

"Titania," he greets her, saying her name like sweet chocolate.

She takes him in her coffee eyes—eyeing her compatriot's cobalt hair, marked eye, broad shoulders, slim torso under a fitted black tank-top, fresh jeans with a gold belt buckle, and especially his muscular tattooed arms—and returns to her alcohol.

"Who the hell are you?" she asks him, in a sneer fit for royalty.

"Jellal," he tells her boldly, cockily, stepping up right to where she's sitting and not even bothering with a chair. He rests his arm onto the counter, lets her have a side glance of his well-developed biceps—which he notices that she takes.

"Huh," Titania says, like she's spitting on him after she takes the eye candy. "So you just joined the clan. And the boss hasn't even gifted you a name? I don't even know who the fuck you are."

"It's enough for me that you know that I haven't been given a name," he smirks. "It means that I'm not completely a stranger, huh?"

She isn't particularly happy that he's sweet talking in the first place, and she's also not amused by his smart ass. She scoffs and swirls the ice in her drink. "Why are you talking to me?"

"I'm in love with you," he admits to her.

Titania looks at him to check if he's being serious before she sneers. "Fuck off," she tells him.

He can feel Cobra and Angel laughing behind him, counting their extra cash behind him.

"I swear to god, Titania. I'm in fucking love with you," he confirms again.

The scarlet-haired superior switched her cross-legged position, pulling back her right leg and then swinging her left leg over. She sat back into the bar stool, folding her arms over her chest.

"Are you now?" she breathes in almost a low threat.

"Yeah," he repeats, inching closer to her.

"You want to hear me moan your name?" she asks him, a carnal smile perched on her pink lips.

"Fuck yeah," he whispers.

"Then prove your worth to me. What have you ever done in your damn life that will impress me?"

She smiles wide and sinister—like he's prey.

He chuckles darkly and turns his body so that she can see the full length of his left arm. He taps at the tattoo at his deltoid—an octopus.

"I've arm-wrestled twenty of these bitches with one hand while I was searching for pirate treasure," he lies on the spot. "Collected all the gold coins and spent it in a bar the next night."

He's made millions of these stories before—the narrative never gets old.

"Really now," she deadpans.

She acts like she's pretending to be interested and actually not, but he knows that she is finding him more entertaining by the second. She isn't buying his made up stories and lies but he isn't fooled by her shitty performance either.

He brings his finger from his shoulder to his mid-bicep, displaying a detailed tattoo of an ancient warrior.

"I've traveled back in time, sword fought with a samurai before raiding the entire palace he was protecting, and ran back to the future in less than a minute."

"Impressive," she comments.

He rolls a finger to his forearm, touching his skin art of a few topless mermaids.

"After being out at sea stranded for several days, I came across some sirens. They wanted me but I sang them a fucking lullaby so sweet, they fell asleep to me instead of the other fucking way around."

"Remarkable," she praises, her voice drenched with sarcasm.

He doesn't waver.

"And…" he adds, with a sly smile. "I have a heart on for you."

"Oh yeah?" she challenges, looking up and down his very colorfully illustrated bicep for the mark. "You inked my name on you?"

He snickers, a mischievous glint in his eyes. He looks back at Cobra and Angel playfully before returning to lock eye contact with her.

He leans forward, daringly. His lips tickle her ear as he whispers into it.

"Look a little lower than that, Titania," he says.

She does, and she notes the bulge of his jeans.

"Not a _heart_ on, Titania," he corrects, husky and salacious. "A _hard_ on."

* * *

 **;) Btw, if anyone knows the song reference that I'm making…definitely message me. You'll get a prize.**

 **But drop me a note regardless! I want to know if this kinda stuff is a yay or a nay.**

 **thir13enth**


	10. file, save, quit

**Written for a tumblr prompt. Not sure how it's going to go so…we shall see…**

* * *

 **file, save, quit**

* * *

"My name is Jellal Fernandes."

He heaved heavily, gasping and falling forward into empty space—

Instinctively he put out his feet and broke his fall onto the white ground, hearing the thud of his feet to the hard floor and the shudder of his bones against the momentum. The sudden fall hurt him, but the pain was sweet. His numb body shivered into being. He stood up to his full height, looked down at his hands and flexed his fingers slowly, relishing the ability to move.

He had been locked away for what seemed like forever, but at the same time seemed like just a flash of an on button.

He reached his hands up to his hair and looked at the reflective glare of the screen to his right, looking at himself. Blue hair, brown eyes, fair skin, slim, tall, a prominent red tattoo over his right eye.

"My name is Jellal Fernandes," he repeated, the croakiness from his disused voice fading.

He squinted past the glare of the snowy white screen and just beyond it he could see a figure sitting cross-legged—red hair tied up into a high ponytail, black-rimmed glasses pushed up to the bridge of her nose, wearing a large white t-shirt that hung off one shoulder and what looked like a pair of old boxers.

She was beautiful, and he could tell even though the room she sat in had no lights on—just the soft light of the screen in front of her.

Her eyes never left the screen—continuing to stare at some space just above him—but her right hand reached for some container to her side, pulling out what looked like two chocolate-covered biscuits, and popping them into her mouth, before returning her hand to the game controller.

Right—he knew her. She was his controller.

She hadn't changed at all, but he didn't quite remember her hair that long—or her hips that wide. He didn't recognize the black leather sofa that she was perched upon, nor the baby crib in the background.

How long had it been since he last saw her?

There wasn't time to think—the scenery around him switched and suddenly he was facing a 15 D-Class monsters, a long broadsword in his hands. About five multi-eyed and poly-legged creatures came forward at him suddenly to ambush him—when he glanced at the very short green bar just above him, his animated heart blipped for a moment in glitch of fear—but he stood his ground, confident in the girl controlling the buttons that governed his every step.

She had done the 100 Monsters challenge many times before.

The first several times she had played him she had lost to the challenge, but now—

Without warning, he charged forward, sweeping into a low undercut and swinging his weapon completely around him—taking care of the couple of monsters that reached him first. Mid-slash into the next opponent, he requipped into a fire sword and before even he noticed what he was doing, his fiery blade destroyed the earth-type monster diagonal to him. As he turned around, he felt his armor morph into adamantine and he brought his hands together to protect himself from a poisonous spray from the demon that had been approaching him from behind.

There was no hesitation in his step—and every button that she smashed with her thumb was precise. He was light-footed, never commanded to do the same thing twice. She controlled him with a masterful art, and after defeating 20 monsters, he looked up at his health and was in no way surprised at all to see that there was no chip off the green bar.

He glanced at her, just a little beyond the white screen. Her eyes were glued to him—burning like coal embers with the same drive and passion that he had always admired—and her mouth was curved into a tight gleeful but nervous smile—expressing that same love for challenge and excitement that he had always cherished.

He was Jellal Fernandes and he was her knight. He would not fail her.

Suddenly he felt a hard slam against his back. He fell forward and coughed, some static dust falling from his mouth. He quickly checked himself—he had lost a few pixels.

"Shit!" she cursed, but without a blink, she retaliated against the monster that had hurt him.

He requipped into a quicker and lighter armor before spiraling in circles around the offense-heavy demon and hitting it from a sensitive spot—destroying it immediately.

"Yes!" she exclaimed, thrusting up her right hand into the air. "I _still_ have it!"

He smiled as much as his digital face would allow him. He remembered when she used to fail to defeat all the monsters at once—how she would get upset and throw the game controller aside but always _always_ come back to the screen to try again and again.

He remembered when an older voice used to call her to eat dinner and how she would refuse to eat until she had defeated at least _one_ more monster in that round.

He remembered how he used to worry about her health more than he worried about his own green bar above his head and sometimes he would freeze himself on the screen and glitch so that she would be forced to put down the remote and eat something before continuing.

Moving onto the next monster, he felt her nimble fingers flip him over and change weapons in the same motion. He stood in front of his first A-Class monster, and he could feel her powering him up, alternating left and right buttons. The blue bar just below his health steadily rose and he felt his adrenaline pump in as he braced for an attack, leaning forward and tensing up. He jumped—

"Erza?"

And suddenly his world turned gray.

She—that's right, her name was _Erza_ —had paused him.

When was the last time she _willingly_ paused him? She used to be so steadfast and wouldn't stop playing until the end of the round or until someone else came into the room and demanded for her to shut off the game.

Who was calling her this time? The "Mom" or "Dad" that she used to complain about?

He watched her put aside the controller.

"Jellal!" she called out, with a wide smile on her face, standing up on the sofa and putting her arms out to receive someone.

He watched a man scoop her up in his arms and press a long passionate kiss on her lips.

His wired heart might have glitched a little bit, seeing the whole exchange.

"What's this?" the man asked her, turning his eyes to the screen. "Don't tell me you've been ignoring Simon all this time," he teased. "I only stepped out for a little bit to get more baby food for him."

"Simon is sleeping. He's completely fine," she assured the man. "And I just felt a little nostalgic. This new house reminds me of my childhood home. So I decided to unpack and play some of my old games."

"Hm," the man replied to her, before squinting at the screen, staring at the space just above him.

And he stood there, paused in mid-action—the sword growing heavy in his right hand, his left leg growing sore in a mid-jump—and looked back at the man's brown eyes and red tattoo—the man whose image he had been fashioned from.

"Jellal Fernandes?" the man asked, with a little amusement, turning to face her again.

She bit her lip. "I _might_ have been missing you," she replied. "I just did a couple of customizations on the character." She kissed the man on the nose and gave him a wide smile.

The man chuckled. "Okay, I'll take care of Simon. You finish your game," he told her, putting her back down onto the sofa. The man grabbed a couple more of the chocolate-covered biscuits from the snack bag next to her.

"Eat first," the man said, sticking the biscuits into her mouth.

She pouted at the man before obligingly chewing and swallowing. The man gave her another kiss on her forehead before leaving and heading toward the baby crib in the back of the room.

He felt a warm comfort (or maybe that was just the machine overheating) grow within him as he put the pieces of the puzzle together.

He wasn't Jellal Fernandes—that man was.

 _He_ was Jellal Fernandes and _he_ was her knight. And _he_ would most definitely not fail her.

He wasn't Jellal Fernandes—he couldn't do anything once she hit file, save, quit.

But as long as the man that he had been fashioned from was still there, he was confident—as confident as he was charging toward this A-Class monster with her behind the buttons—that he could rest in disuse, growing static and dusty in the console, for a long time without a worry at all.

* * *

 **Damn it. Damn it all. One moment, I'm perfectly fine and within word count, and then the next, I've blown it by about 500 words. Ughhhhh, why can I not write in my constraints…**

 **Anyway, hm…this one ended up being not so dialogue-heavy, which is interesting since I'm usually pretty dialogue-focused but hey, hopefully you all enjoyed! Let me know what you think!**

 **thir13enth**


	11. green

**Hi friends! Thank you all so much for reading and for being so supportive of this series! I wouldn't be writing as much if it wasn't for all you precious people so I wanted to thank you one more time before the turn of the year!** **(I know! It's already almost 2016!) And you know what that means: another year of more Jerza! So l** **et's end the year off right. Short and sweet piece of Jerza! :3**

 **This is dedicated to** wordslinger **, just because we've been talking a ton lately and I was writing this while in our conversations about cats or baklava or maybe chickpeas and what not.**

* * *

 **green**

 _Just about everything was greener on the other side of Erza's fence—well except for her neighbor. He was just hot._

* * *

Erza didn't want to admit it but she was jealous to crumbly cake bits of her new next door neighbor.

It was a hard feeling to understand for the scarlet-haired and successful lawyer, who in her thirty-something years of life had never felt the threat of competition of someone taking her spot on the throne away from her for _anything_.

Not in how many hours she served at the nearby senior center, not in how many days a week she went out for a morning run, not in how many delicious potlucks she held at her house, not in how many children she babysat for no charge, not in how many books she lent out to neighborhood friends, not in how much candy she gave out to all the trick-or-treaters every year—

And most certainly _not_ in how lush and green her landscaping was—at least until now.

The land directly to the right of Erza's house had never been so vegetative as it was at the moment, and the prolific plant life was encroaching on the first-place beauty of Erza's toil on her own soil—something that Erza would have never thought would be the cause of her insecurities.

After all, previously Mavis—before moving in with Zeref in Alvarez, the cul-de-sac across the town—had been living in the spot adjacent to the warrior-like superwoman, and the fair blonde for the life of her couldn't figure out why quite literally every living thing died around her—including even the determined cacti that she plotted at the corner of her house.

Yet just in the span of a month, _that damn neighbor_ had turned the brown desert of Mavis's past attempts of landscaping into a gorgeous patch of colorful ceramics, perfectly shaped trees, and coordinated flowers that rivaled Erza's many _many_ years of preening her front lawn.

Not to mention the grass was literally _greener_.

Even greener than her suppressed and curtailed envy.

And she didn't understand it at all. For one, how it was done in that short amount of time. And two, the purpose behind it all.

Was this a challenge? Why did this new adult-on-the-block need to boast a new and refreshed yard?

It was clearly just to spite her.

Erza tsked, suddenly snipping her garden shears, the scraping of metal on metal sounding out her frustrating situation.

She cast a glance across the street, catching a pregnant Lucy stepping out of her house to pick up the mail from that day. Thinking quickly, she stood up from her squat from the bushes she was trimming and made her way—shears and all—over to her friend's home.

Lucy would be able to give her more details about the neighbor. After all, Lucy was a stay-at-home author—she _had_ to have met or at least seen their new neighbor at some point in the past five weeks.

"Oh, the new neighbor?" Lucy confirmed, putting a finger on her pink lip.

"Yeah—" Erza nodded but then stopped when seeing the blonde's eyes immediately light up.

"Oh, he's great!" the writer told Erza. "He helped me lift some packages that we got in the mail earlier this week. He's such a nice person, and when Natsu forgot to…"

Her friend's voice began to drown out in Erza's ears as the redhead seethed.

This was _not_ happening. _She_ was the superwoman of the neighborhood.

Her neighbor was most definitely trying to win the affection of the neighborhood—trying to take away her reputation as the "best neighbor ever," a title that she had been maintaining for many _many_ years.

Her lips inadvertently flattened into a straight smile.

"—so yeah! He's great!" Lucy concluded. "I think you should get to know him too!"

Oh indeed Erza would get to know him.

She would get to know him as the neighbor that tried to outdo her but ultimately failed.

"I will definitely put that on my list of things to do," Erza agreed, before thanking and saying goodbye to both Lucy and the human being that was developing in Lucy's stomach.

The scarlet-haired lawyer ducked back to her side of the street and trekked back through her home before walking out into her backyard. She took a deep breath, placing her garden shears down on the outdoor table, and looked around at her well-maintained backyard, full of various fruit trees and a small vegetable plot of mostly tomatoes.

Something very out of place caught her attention.

There was an interruption in her perimeter of white fencing—a splinter of oak brown wood, a break in the once-pristine wood.

She wasn't sure how her fence was damaged or exactly when it happened or for how long it went without her observant eyes noticing but the one thing she knew was that she had to get that fixed.

Erza mentally moved 'fixing the fault in her fence' up to the top of her to-do list, replacing 'destroying her neighbor's momentum to becoming the best neighbor ever.'

She approaching the damage in the fence, crouching down to examine potential causes for the imperfection. The hole was about the size of her index finger, and it seemed like the part of the wooden panel had just been sliced off—and sliced off unevenly at that.

The redhead peered closer at the splintered wood, eyebrows furrowed, but suddenly realized that if she just shifted her focal perspective, she frankly had the best vantage point for investigating her neighbor.

And tried as she might, she couldn't resist taking a peek through the hole at the other side, and she fumed just _imagining_ what the oh-so-perfect resident next door had in his backyard:

Probably had a fountain spewing crystal geyser blue water into a gorgeous pink-green lily pad mosaic of a pond with large healthy and well-fed koi.

Probably a Zen garden full of polished smooth stones and pure white Caribbean sand, untouched and ready for peaceful meditation or reclusive thinking.

Probably a pool that reflected the heavens surrounded by the most eco-friendly lawn furniture, including a well-cleaned grill and an outdoor wood brick oven.

She boiled, her eyes immediately darting to the porch, deciding to start from the backend of the house before she took in the glory of the rest of her neighbor's backyard. The back door swung open suddenly and she glared at her competition, staring him down.

 _He_ was the sworn enemy, the threat to her position as the best neighbor ever. He was—

Oh.

Was what she breathed out upon seeing her neighbor. She could quite literally feel her pupils dilating as she watched him step out barefoot onto his backyard porch, the acrid feelings that she had been broiling within slowly dissipating into mush.

She might have licked her lips, in the same way that she would have savored a last bite of cheesecake.

And damn it all because her rational and logic-trained legal head suddenly felt warm and fuzzy.

 _Of course_ he was put together—holding a pair of red kitchen scissors in his right hand, caressing the stems of a windowsill basil plant up to the sunlight before snipping off the amount he needed for what definitely smelled like red marinara sauce.

 _Of course_ he was gentle and kind—smiling down at the stray cat that had pawed its way up the two steps to where he was standing and kneeling down to pet the feline on the head, eliciting a cute mewl and soft purr from the animal.

 _Of course_ he had to be handsome—with dark blue tresses and a clean shave cut, chiseled jaw and a thin lips that looked like they could wipe anyone off their feet with a simple smirk and a complementary wink with those soft brown kind eyes and thick lashes.

And of course he _had_ to be shirtless—showing off a heavenly body complete with well-formed arms, a defined collarbone and matching shoulder blades, and a sleek torso whose lightly rippled muscles screamed to be kissed all the way down to his…comfortable waist-hugging gray sweatpants.

Well, she thought to herself. Perhaps this fence didn't need to be fixed just yet.

* * *

 **Oh. This didn't turn out so short after all. Lol. Whoops. Sorry.**

 **Ah, well, let me know what you think! Enjoy the rest of your holiday season! (Although some of us have to get back to work tomorrow morning...)**

 **thir13enth**


	12. routine

**A short drabble for the prompt request: "I've been bumping into you in the elevator for weeks now."**

 **I admit the story is probably going to end up fluffy and cheesy and all warm feels so let's see what I make of this!**

* * *

 **routine**

* * *

They've been taking the same elevator up to work for weeks now, and in fact, their morning rides together have become part of her routine.

Erza isn't sure when she first began noticing the blue-haired man, but to this end, she's spent so many minutes with him in the 10-person-occupancy square of elevator to the point that she doesn't know what an elevator ride would be without him.

This is how Erza starts work every morning, and by now, she knows him down the detail.

...

He always arrives at 8:17 am.

She walks in through the side entrance of the building, having parked a couple of blocks down because she needs to get the extra steps in her pedometer. She presses the up button on the dashboard before stepping back, briefcase in her hands in front of her while she tilts her head up to watch the numbers above the elevator decrease, coming closer to the ground floor.

A minute later, he strides into the building, ducks gracefully between the glass doors, coffee cup in his hand. He nods a quick 'hello, good morning' to the receptionist before standing at her right side, trusting that she's already called for the elevator. His eyes also look up to the descending numbers above the elevator before they roll down to G.

The elevator chimes, the doors slide open, and the two of them steps to the side—she, one to the left, and he, one to the right. They let the few people in the elevator get off, pass them by, before synchronously entering the elevator.

They stand back, take their usual places.

Sometimes she wonders an elevator ride together is the reason he ensures he's up when his alarm strikes at 6:30 am, drags him out of bed and onto the cold floor of the shower—because sometimes that's certainly the case for her.

...

He always orders a tall cappuccino.

She can tell by the robust smell of coffee beans, by the scrawling on the side of his cup.

His name is Jellal—and even if the barista spells it wrong on his cup that day—she knows it well because she's seen it written many times before.

She finds herself practicing his name on her tongue silently, lazily rolling the l in her mouth.

She leans back against the elevator wall, raises her right hand to smooth out her suit jacket and tucks away stray scarlet strands back behind her ear—the ones that escape her high professional ponytail. She fixes the work badge pinned on the left of her suit jacket, tilts her body toward him, offers him subtle chances to read her name.

She never catches his eyes glancing over to memorize the letters of her name, but she knows that he too is silently rolling her r on his tongue.

They don't bother greeting each other, never a word passes between them.

Some things are better said through simple smiles—warm, sweet, rich like coffee.

...

He always stands on the opposite side of the elevator.

They settle into their spots—she on the right, he on the left—before they step forward to reach for the buttons to their floors. She presses 9 with her right index finger, and he presses 14 with the hand holding his coffee, hitting 14 briefly with his fourth finger.

She's noticed it's not bound by any ring.

They press their floors at the same time, and the world works so their arms never have to cross or interfere with the other. Then they step back and take a deep breath as the doors slide back.

The elevator closes and their moment locks in place.

...

He always wears a simple work shirt and dark slacks, carrying a large stack of files in his other arm.

She knows most of the clothing in his closet, and she tries not to stare too long when he wears something new.

For the most part though, his rotation of shirts aren't a surprise. Whether it's the light blue shirt with the pen mark over the breast pocket or the white shirt with the little strand of thread popping off of its third button, she's almost completely memorized his wardrobe, as well as the creases and wrinkles of his clothing and even the way he always fixes his collar unevenly.

She decides that when she gathers the courage, she'd tell him that his collar is off.

And maybe give him her number as well.

...

He's always been there, at 8:17 am, wearing a clean work shirt, collar crooked, a tall cappuccino in his right hand, standing on the opposite side of the elevator.

So she doesn't understand why it's taken her so long to say a word to him until today.

It's an impulse really.

She feels an overwhelming need to get _something_ off her chest, and instead of through her voice, it comes through her arm, reaching over to the other side of the elevator panel. She's decided to press his floor for him, do him the favor so he wouldn't have to multi-task with his coffee hand.

She presses 14, her hand darting over so she could do it before he reaches, but his arm also darts over hers, presses 9—as if he's planned to do the same.

Their arms cross like their fates and in surprise, they look up to meet each other's eyes.

Was it bad that in that moment she drowns in his deep ocean blue skies?

So they exchange words—the first of many to come.

"I'm Jellal," he says, even though he knows she already knows his name.

"I'm Erza," she says, even though she knows he already knows the same.

"Jellal," she repeats.

"Erza," he repeats.

"Would you join me for coffee sometime?" they ask each other at the same time.

Then, they say nothing, just an exchange of smiles.

They already know each other's answer, no need for replies.

* * *

 **Ugh, I struggled with this one. The tone of the story went all over the place as I was writing it so hopefully that came out alright.**

 **Anyway, before I write the next Jerza one-shot, I want to let y'all vote on what I should write next. I've sorta already opened it to the tumblr audience, but I'm curious to hear what you want to see!** **Below I have excerpts from two pieces—**

 _"Roses are red, violets are blue.  
From far away, I've been admiring you."_

She sighed, facepalming herself. God, for an English major and aspiring poet, Erza was not very good at composing love letters of confession.

She had spent the last 15 minutes coming up with the two line rhyme for her heart crush and all she had managed to communicate in the 19 syllables was that she was unoriginal, cheesy, and a tad bit stalkerish.

 **OR**

Indeed, Jellal had wanted to make their anniversary a very special day…he just hadn't expected to find himself proposing to her in the middle of a busy ER.

She looked at him and blinked. Twice.

"After all of what happened tonight, give me _one_ good reason why I should even consider marrying you," she said.

He glanced at her white hospital gown and the laminated patient label around her wrist before giving her his answer:

"I have excellent health insurance."

 **Let me know which one should be next!**

 **thir13enth**


	13. breaking ice

**psa:** i am very sorry for my absence in this story. i have been the worst. anyway, the votes for the last chapter are in (well they have been for a while) but...i'll start with "erza the poet" one first and then go into "jellal and health insurance" afterwards! i admit that i haven't written either of those one shots yet, but for now, i hope i hope this will satisfy your taste for now! i will get started on the other one-shots v soon!

 **another** **psa** : i'm in a dilemma where i'm struggling to stack all my jerza stuff into one story but also don't think they all go cohesively together - whether because of length, tone, rating, or universe. so...just for future notes, this collection **sugar sweet** will be for mostly 1k+ AUs that are not explicitly sexual. the other collections are...well the other ones, haha. i'll try to make it clear.

 **notes:** from a prompt that i was requested on tumblr: "You were never just my friend."

* * *

 **breaking ice**

* * *

He raises both hands to his mouth to breathe hot air onto his winter-frigid fingers, and when he pulls his hands apart to tuck them back into his pockets, he's surprised to find a very familiar shade of red before him.

"E-Erza," he stutters.

Suddenly he doesn't feel so cold anymore.

He almost loses his balance on his skates.

"Hey," she replies. She looks off to the left briefly before meeting his eyes again. "Do you mind if we share the ice?"

He glances down at her skates—these are new.

Of course, they're new. How could they have been the same ones she wore back when she was in high school? Now that she's a few years older, she's definitely inched out of the white sequin-covered skates she used to don so proudly.

He realizes that she's still waiting for his answer when the silence between them stretches long.

"Yeah, of course," he finally replies.

She gives him a brilliant smile. "Great!" she thanks him, and turns on her heel to glide away.

Is that it? Is he just going to let her—

"Erza—"

But she's already gone, her scarlet hair rippling behind her, the tatters of her old faded light blue scarf desperately hanging onto her neck in the headwind.

She hasn't changed very much. She still carries herself with grace over the ice, her body not quite thin but strong and gallant. She still skates at the intersection of falling and staying up, the blade of her skate tilted at the angle between comfortable and daring on her slow wide turns at the edges of the frozen lake, her limbs tapered to points between balance and risk when she vaults her body into the air in double loops and spirals.

She still skates like she was born to do it—even if she only learned how to three years ago.

He slowly closes his mouth when he realizes that his jaw has dropped.

Erza has already made several loops around the lake before she notices that he hasn't moved an inch. Her eyebrows furrow and she slows down, making one more large round as she waits for her momentum to falter so that she stops right in front of him.

She looks teasingly at him. "What?" she asks him, looking him up and down. "Have you forgotten how to skate, Jellal?" She laughs once, musically. "Weren't _you_ the one that taught me how to skate?"

He chuckles, hiding his shaky breath. "I just…" he starts. "I haven't seen you in a while."

Her toothy grin reduces to a soft smile. "I know," she says. She clasps her hands behind her and thinks for a bit before explaining. "I should have told you that I was coming back today."

"It's okay," he reassures her.

"I'm sorry," she apologizes anyway. By now, her smile has completely dissipated. "I only decided to come home yesterday night. I didn't think I'd come back this winter break." She pauses and then adds. "You know how it is at my home."

"I know."

"Honestly, I didn't plan to bump into you here," she confesses. "I didn't tell you yet because I knew you'd want to see me right away…" And here, she brings her right hand to her lips. "So I wanted to at least have the time to...freshen up and look a little better before coming out to see you, you know?"

She looks back at him and he quickly lifts his gaze from her lips to her eyes.

Her eyes are intense. He casts his eyes to the side.

"You look fine," he pretends to mutter under his breath—making sure he's said it just loud enough for her to hear.

She pretends not to hear. She hides a smile behind her hand.

He can't help but notice.

"You know…when it snows in Magnolia and I get bored of university, I skate," she says. She looks to see if he's paying attention—and of course he is—so she continues without hesitation. "And I skate outdoors on the frozen lake nearby. I never skate indoors. The ice inside is…too perfect, and it isn't much of a challenge."

Jellal gives her a warm smile. "You've always loved to do things the hard way," he remarks.

"Well yeah," she affirms. "But I also liked it better outside because it reminds me of you. You only skate outside after all. You said it feels freer, and that you like how the sky reflects off the ice…" Her voice falters and she looks up at him.

She doesn't expect him to catch her eyes so suddenly. She staggers back a bit—but on ice, a bit means a lot and she loses her balance, her arms flailing forward.

"Kya!" she yelps, and as he reaches forward to catch her arm, he smiles to himself, hearing her signature uncharacteristically adorable yelp—a sound he hasn't heard in much too long.

He secures her with a combination of his strength and offset body weight. Once he's stabilized her, he reminds her with a soft laugh. "You used to fall over all the time when you were first learning."

She grins, reaching up to take his other hand. "That's because I had a horrible teacher."

"Fair point," he agrees, pulling her back up to her feet.

She thanks him, then she bends slightly down to brush bits of ice and dusty snow off her leggings. When she stands back up to her full height, she smiles up at him.

"Well then," she says, noting the sun dipping below the horizon. "I think I should get going home now."

"Okay," he replies.

He wants to say more.

"I'll see you soon?" she asks, rotating herself to skate off in the opposite direction.

"Yeah," he affirms.

He raises his hand to wave goodbye—

Wait.

Three years ago, he didn't realize that he wouldn't see her again until now.

He can't just let her go _again_.

He can't just let her go without telling her _again_. He can't just let her go when he doesn't know the next time he's going to be able to see her. He can't just let her go when he knows university keeps her busy, and when he knows he works several part-times to keep his house standing—

"Wait—"

She turns her heel, flipping the direction of her skates.

"You were never just my friend, you know," he says.

She looks surprised. "I…" she repeats, turning her body completely around to face him.

She's forgotten that she's standing on ice and not on solid ground, and so she loses her balance again, falling over backwards with her signature 'kya.'

He catches her again, but since he's moved so suddenly this time, his velocity doesn't stop when she falls into his arms, and he too, comes crashing down to the ice, falling over backwards onto his butt.

They laugh, exchanging thank yous and apologies, before silence falls over the two of them again.

She looks up at him, her head pillowed under his forearm, his other arm half wrapped around her waist. Her hair is spilled scarlet all over his thighs and the ice.

"So…you were saying," she says slowly, reaching up to brush some of something off his sweater. Her eyes stall for a bit, before she meets his eyes again. "I was never just your friend?"

He tilts his head down toward her.

He thinks he might kiss her.

"Yeah," he confirms, with a smile. "You were also the biggest klutz I knew."

* * *

thank you for reading! reviews very appreciated, and of course, with love,

 **thir13enth** (who needs to get herself together for jerza week 2016)


	14. lineage

**tumblr anon asks:** Can I request an awkward meeting the parents ? Jerza feat. Irene, please.

 **notes:** ah! thank you! it's been a while since I've fulfilled requests in my inbox and I'm happy to start my day doing this one! thank you for asking me, and I think that I'll keep this on the short simple sweet end, if you don't mind!

also **warning warning!** spoiler alert for those of you who aren't caught up with the manga!

* * *

Jellal thought he would have been ready to meet Erza's family after three months of dating her, but yet standing on her porch, right before the front door of her home, his once-confident fist still hesitates over the white-painted wood.

It's totally fine, he assures himself. He planned to arrive here just (and only) fifteen minutes earlier than their reservation at that fancy dinner place to pick Erza up because he figured that fifteen minutes is more than enough time to have casual small talk with Erza's relatives before slipping away for dinner right when they might start asking more dissecting personal questions.

Jellal trusted in his social skills and affirmed to himself that there is nothing that he has to hide anyway—well, save the things that should stay between him and Erza _exclusively_.

But ignoring positions in bed that she particularly favors and that _one time_ they took a vacation out-of-the-country without telling a soul, this meeting with the family should not be all that bad, and so he musters strength into his knuckles and raps quickly on the door.

Then he waits for what seems like hours before he sees the subtle flicker in the eyehole of the door, then the click of the lock, and then he braces himself with his most charming smile as the door swings open.

When he sees the fierce mane of thick red hair—braided into two long braids—behind the door that most decidedly is _not_ Erza, he reminds himself that gene inheritance is most definitely a thing and that _she_ is probably where Erza got everything.

He gulps. She stands nowhere close to him in height, yet he is intimidated by her intense stare. He needs to keep it together. He wills his right hand forward.

"Oh, hi, uh—"

"Call me Eileen," she tells him, stretching out her hand for him to shake.

"Eileen," he repeats. "I'm Jellal."

"Right," she replies. "Erza told us that you would be here to pick her up."

"Yes," is all he can say to this.

"Come in," she beckons, and when she turns around, Jellal grabs a quick breath of air before stepping through the door.

The smell of Erza's home calms him a little. And as he scans the living room that he is lead into, he sees that terribly comfy black couch that they've spent plenty of weekend nights watching movies and cuddling on, as well as the coffee table with the wine stain—hopefully unnoticed—on its corner from a makeshift fancy homemade dinner at her place.

The sight of the familiar scene calms him slightly—it's not the first time he's been here—however, he's only been within Erza's family's space when the rest of them aren't there sharing it, and it most definitely is the first time he's been here in the presence of another Scarlet.

He sits across from Eileen, as casually proper as he can, and tries to forget the fact that the older woman is most definitely studying him from head to toe. He can't seem like he's trying too hard, but at the same time he can't be completely off guard and be careless with what he does.

He forces himself to make eye contact, and good god—she is fearsome.

"So… _Jellal_ , " Eileen states, as if she is amused that this is the first time she is formally addressing him. She crosses her legs and folds her arms across her well-rounded chest—which Jellal (albeit with disappointment in himself for having unconsciously noted) realizes is probably another something that Erza adopted from her mother.

"Tell me about yourself."

It is like he is being interviewed for a job. Except ten-thousand times worse.

Impress, impress, he has to impress. He just _has_ to impress.

Erza told him plenty of times before that he didn't have to do this and that her family didn't really care, but Jellal is much less worried about what Erza's family could potentially think of him than how much he's worried about how Erza's family would feel about her when they assess what kind of a person she brought into her life.

"Well," he starts. "I'm Jellal and I'm also a senior. We're in the same level math class—which is where we met."

"Oh, yeah, I'm aware," Eileen interjects. "Erza hasn't been just keeping quiet about you, you know?"

"Ah, of course," he replies, cutting his train of words and moving onto another paragraph about his life. "Well…I don't know if Erza's told you this about me but my family just moved in from Alvarez last year because my mother recently switched jobs."

He sees Eileen's eyebrow raise.

"What does your mom do?"

"She's an engineer," Jellal replies, worrying about how _close_ the questions are getting about. "A mechanical engineer."

"I see," she says. And then before Jellal can continue, she asks, "Are you trying to be an engineer as well?"

"Uh, no," he admits. "I haven't really decided what I want to do yet, but I'll figure that out when I get to college, I guess."

"Erza told me that you were going to Fiore University."

Jellal forces as modest of a smile as he can. "Yes, that I am."

Eileen gives him some form of an approving look. "That's impressive. Fiore is top, you know?"

"Ah, yeah," he says. "I'm pretty lucky."

The older woman is just about to ask him another question but then Erza, his savior, rounds the corner—looking beautiful as ever. She's slipped into a fuzzy sweatshirt and a pleated skirt, and she's outlined her eyes with the slightest bit of eyeliner, and best of all, she's kept her hair down—long and flowing down her shoulders.

He wants to keep looking but he's afraid if he stares too long he'll get a scoff and an ahem from the bigger Scarlet.

"You have such blue hair," Eileen says suddenly, when he turns to face her again.

Erza smiles graciously at him while she takes a seat next to her mother. Her warm smile comforts him, and he nods as he gathers up some more assurance.

"From my dad," he explains. And then he tries a light remark. "I…I can see where Erza got her hair from as well."

Eileen nods, with the slightest of smiles. "Naturally."

Jellal thinks it best for him to change the topic as quickly as possible.

"But it's very nice to finally meet you in person!" he exclaims, with as much strained enthusiasm as he can. "I've heard so much about you. Erza tells me that you make delicious homemade ramen and that you even make the noodles from scratch!"

A beat.

When Erza blinks several times, he knows that he's done something wrong.

Jellal wants to shoot himself.

Oh god, what the hell did he do this time? Did he mistake a story about Laxus's mother with Erza's mother? Whose mother was the one that made apparently awesome ramen anyway? Did he just insult her in some way by pronouncing the name of the dish wrong? Did he just invade some personal space? Did he just imply that Erza and him have been dating for longer than Erza might have told her mother? Had Erza even lied about her relationship with him to her mother without telling him? That was impossible, right? But what if—

"Um…" Erza starts, looking back and forth between Eileen and him.

Jellal braces. He doesn't know what to expect—but he knows it's going to be bad.

"Actually…Eileen is my older _sister_ ," Erza explains, with a small smile. "She's not my mom."

Well then.

* * *

 **end note** : how this became more than 1,000 words, I don't know. no wonder it took me longer than I expected.


	15. stairwell acoustics

**notes:** very-short-but-then-it-turned-long drabble. no idea where the idea came from.

also _holy shit_ , happy anniversary to this drabble collection! i just missed it by a day. look at all this jerza trash. (that i have created, nonetheless) sigh.

* * *

 **stairwell acoustics**  
 _she could hear her heartbeat loud._

* * *

Needless to say, Erza was _ready_.

That morning, she woke up three minutes before her alarm and had already had three eggs frying in her cooking pan and two slices of bread in the toaster before the clock struck 6:00 am—as she always did.

At the gym, she tucked 30 minutes of cardio before she lifted five more pounds than she did last week and held a plank for an extra minute longer for good measure—as she always did.

As she settled her mind for class and for the rest of her day, she showered extra fresh with lemongrass soap and dressed herself pretty—as she always did.

And today, she donned a white skirt (with a pocket!), a dark blue blouse (this one could handle her breast size, and didn't have buttons that just popped open whenever she bent over!), and her favorite underwear (smooth, silky, and not lingerie!). Complete with a fresh brew of black coffee (the tenth one is free!) in her left hand.

So _yeah_ , she was feeling ready to conquer the rest of her day, and _hell yeah_ , of course she was going to rock that a capella audition she had at 4:00 pm.

Not even having an 8:00 am history class in the old lecture building—constructed in the 60s and probably still had some asbestos peeling off patchy ceilings—could ruin her spirit. She had her momentum for the day, and she was going to power through her class material, power through her lunchtime meetings, and power through a quick study session before heading over to the music department for her audition.

"Happy Thursday! One more day until Friday!" the security guard greeted Erza as she strolled in through the double doors.

"Indeed," Erza replied, with a nod. "A happy Thursday to you, too."

She bypassed the front desk and headed straight for the stairs.

Five flights was nothing. She wouldn't have given up the opportunity for a mini workout for anything.

Plus, the metal-and-concrete stairwell had great architectural acoustics—something that she accidentally discovered when suddenly hearing how her humming reflected from wall to wall.

Erza stopped climbing stairs for a moment, testing to hear only her voice without her steps in the background. She took a deep breath and sang a single note—soft at first, but slowly building up richer and stronger as the corners of her lips lifted, hearing how vibrantly the note carried in the stairwell. She held her note as long as she could, letting it fade as she ran out of breath.

Her smile widened. She supposed there was still something good about this disintegrating building—a somewhat hidden recess with excellent reverberation time.

Well, maybe not so hidden—since it was in a public classroom building, and since it was a stairwell—but at least for this early morning when no one else was in the stairwell, Erza could enjoy her love for music.

And _that_ was something her sister Eileen could never take away from her.

Erza took another deep breath, before she resumed climbing her way up to the fifth floor, starting off the first couple of notes to the song she was preparing to perform for her 30-second excerpt. Her voice didn't need too much warm up, but she definitely felt her throat grow warmer and her face loosen up as she continued her way up.

The stairwell was most definitely magical—because she felt her self-confidence well up and her self-doubt wane as she built up the melody—and turning the corner to the next flight of steps—belted out the final few notes—

"Oh," Erza gasped, her singing ceasing when she realized someone else—a second-year student, by the looks of it—was coming down the same flight of stairs.

…just for how long had he been in the stairwell?!

She certainly hoped for not as long as she had been climbing the stairs to class! She must have mistakenly confused his steps for an echo of hers, and she probably didn't even hear him approaching over her singing—how embarrassing!

"S-Sorry," she apologized, her cheeks burning hot, shuffling herself over to the right side of the stairs to let the other person through.

She pretended not to notice the prominent tattoo over his right eye as he passed by.

"Scarlet," he remarked, as he stepped past her, with a small smile on his face.

Her eyebrows furrowed and she spun around, stopping in her tracks—not sure if she heard what she thought she heard. "What?"

"Scarlet," he repeated, continuing down a few steps. "The song you were singing," he replied, coming to a stop at the landing.

Her eyes widened. "Wait…you know that song?"

Practically no one in her generation knew that song—a shame, in Erza's opinion—which is half the reason why she elected to sing this during her audition. The fact that another student was able to recognize the song with just 15 seconds of the verse…

Well, that was something that Erza never expected. And quite honestly, that was most absolutely worth a conversation over coffee.

"Yeah," he said, now turning his heels to face her. "My mother is a big fan of Fairy Tail," he explained. "Ever since their return debut after seven years out of the spotlight, she's been talking nonstop about them and sending me every YouTube cover of that song she spots online."

Erza laughed. "She's a committed fan."

"Definitely," he agreed, and then made eye contact with her. "I think she'd really like to hear your version."

"You think?" she nervously replied, carrying on the conversation. She wasn't sure what to make of the comment, but frankly, she was hoping that he knew where he was going with this.

He nodded. "You have a beautiful voice," he said, and then looked off to the side before returning to her eyes. "I think I'd like to hear it again another time."

Erza swallowed hard, blinking a few times and before she decided to just go for it—

"Well," she said. "I have class every Tuesday and Thursday starting at eight—"

She saw his eyes suddenly brighten—and she was almost one-hundred percent certain there was a wide wide grin stretched over her face.

"—and I always take the stairs," she added.

He laughed softly, clutching the shoulder strap to his backpack. "I guess…" he started. "I guess I'll see you around then?"

"Yeah. I guess I'll see around, too," she said—

—or something like that. She couldn't really hear herself over her heartbeat.

* * *

yep, a very corny ending. with apologies for the high-fructose corn syrup,

 **thir13enth**


End file.
